Unfortunately for this we aren't going to get some 1080p video of someone in a mask sneaking into the DNC server room, just the fact that the 17 agencies all agree based on what they've seen believe that to be the case.
Unfortunately everyone these days think everything is a conspiracy or has to have HD recordings of something they think happened as public evidence or it is false, but that's not how the world really works...
>" just the fact that the 17 agencies all agree based on what they've seen believe that to be the case."
This simply isn't true. The whole "17 agencies" thing is a talking point that first came up in one of Hillary Clinton's debates and gets repeated without challenge.
The "17 agencies" didn't all independently make their own assesments about what happened and decided it was the Russians. Instead, James Clapper (at the time, the Director of National Intelligence) made the claim that the Russians were behind certain hacks. Clapper is the ultimate head of sixteen out of seventeen of the agencies.
The actual agencies involved include parts of the coast guard and the department of energy and other groups that seem REALLY unlikely to have conducted an in-depth, independent investigation into the hacking of a politician's emails.
Also, this is the same James Clapper who lied under oath to congress. Specifically, when asked “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” He responded, “No, sir.” Wyden asked “It does not?” and Clapper said, “Not wittingly."
This is perjury and he should have been prosecuted for it. At a minimum, lying under oath makes it less likely that anything else he claims should be taken at face value.
I don't believe it was perjury -- a statement made with the intention to deceive.
NSA makes a distinction between data and metadata, as we know. If you assume that distinction, then the question is -- "does the NSA collect actual communications content on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans" -- something which, to our knowledge, is not the case.
Can it? Potentially yes. But we haven't seen anything that suggests that it actually does.
At best, his response contains an assumption which is arguably normal for an NSA director to make, and which may have be conveniently advantageous to hold. But I'm sure, even if you ask him today, he will say that metadata does not constitute intelligence collection.
To prove perjury you need to demonstrate mens rea (guilty intent) and I think it's plausible that he did not intend to mislead the investigation. It was a hard question to answer, because he could not answer in a way that would reveal the existence of the program to collect metadata either.
> "This is for you, Director Clapper, again on the surveillance front. And I hope we can do this in just a yes or no answer because I know Senator Feinstein wants to move on. Last summer, the NSA director was at a conference, and he was asked a question about the NSA surveillance of Americans. He replied, and I quote here, ‘The story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is completely false.’
> "The reason I’m asking the question is, having served on the committee now for a dozen years, I don’t really know what a dossier is in this context. So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
To answer "no" to this question is to say that the NSA does not "have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers" on Americans. I see no reason to believe why that's not the case. You're welcome to explain to me why storing communications metadata at the NSA is worse than requiring telcos to store it, but that's hardly the slam dunk "he's definitely a fucking liar" case you want it to be.
It's also unreasonable to expect the DNI to voluntarily admit to the existence of a centralized metadata repository in public, on TV. That's what the "he lied" folks expect to have happened here.
At the end of the day, "Clappergate" is just "where should the metadata live," and that is, to my mind, a very minor argument.
If grandstanding to out a secret program when he knew the answer and was supposed to be asking that question in private I'd say it was fine, and it seems everyone else thought so also hence no charges.
The thing is, "17 agencies agree" doesn't really mean anything, if the evidence that all 17 agencies are relying on is a single report from a private security company hired by the DNC, and not independent investigation. If all of those agencies had looked at the original evidence themselves, the story would be different.
Also, the "17 agencies" statement came from James Clapper, and not individually issued from each of the agencies themselves. It also bears mentioning that the "17 agencies" include groups that I really, really doubt bothered to investigate ANYTHING to do with a politician getting his emails hacked - do people actually believe that the coast guard was tracking down Russian hackers after DNC secrets? What about the department of energy? These are some of the "17 agencies" mentioned.
Unfortunately everyone these days think everything is a conspiracy or has to have HD recordings of something they think happened as public evidence or it is false, but that's not how the world really works...