Election security

FBI-DHS Report on Alleged Russian Hacking Does Not Even Claim to Be Accurate

The joint report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued on Thursday to support accusations of cyberattacks by Russia against the United States lacks any serious substance and does not even claim to be accurate, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman told Sputnik.

The report contains a disclaimer and states it is being presented "as is," adding the DHS does not provide warranties of any kind about the information presented in it.

"It doesn’t claim that it’s accurate," Freeman stated. "It doesn’t mention WikiLeaks … not even once. In other words, the report does not allege that the Russians gave any Democratic Party or [Democratic National Committee chairman Leon] Podesta emails to WikiLeaks." Freeman also identified what he called "weasel words" in the report, by which he meant qualifying terms to cover the fact that the authors of the report knew they were making allegations that could not be supported by hard evidence or proof. "The report starts with a disclaimer, and uses weasel words like ‘as is,’ and ‘does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information’." These are terms that someone who is selling something that is useless uses when he does not want to talk about the fact the blasted thing will not work.