Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller report that the CIA told “key senators” in a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill last week that the agency’s intelligence has shown Russia intervened in the U.S. election with the “quite clear” intention of getting Donald Trump elected:
Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances. [...]
...intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were “one step” removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.
If Russia was the culprit it could have acted just like the Mafia. Or the FBI and CIA when they have people infiltrate leftist organizations and engage in black ops. You don't send capos or special agents, you outsource with contract labor, specifically to avoid producing intelligence tying you to the people doing your dirty work. That final sentence certainly applies in capitals other than Moscow. "Plausible deniability" was, after all, invented in America.
Whatever the case, the American people deserve to know more details than provided by anonymous third-party sources quoted on Fridays.