The Former CIA Acting Director told Suzanne Kelly of the The Cipher Brief, that Russia's interference in our general election process was "an existential threat to our way of life" and is the "political equivalent of 9/11."
After the Washington Post reported that the CIA said Russia hacked into our election process to help Trump, a bevy of opinions has burst onto the scene.
We've heard from the "hacking deniers" like Kellyanne Conway that the CIA are partisan cranks and the story is ludicrous to those very wary of what just transpired and calling for investigations.
Mike Morell was very worried about what had happened and gave out a blaring warning to our entire political classes.
Kelly asked, "Tell me about the significance of these allegations if they are true, what’s the overall significance to national security if Russia was successful in doing something like this?
Morell said that America knew Russia has been meddling in the election since October and said, "What was new in The Washington Post story, if its right—we still don’t know whether its right, and whether the rest of the IC agrees or not—but that the CIA believes the intent of the meddling was to help Mr. Trump and hurt Mrs. Clinton’s chances. That meddling went way beyond just stealing the DNC and Podesta information and giving it to WikiLeaks, that’s what’s new."
He continued, "I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11. It is huge and the fact that it hasn’t gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me."
This is a national security crisis because if Russia can effect changes in the electoral process, what else can they meddle in?
Their should be transparent and bipartisan cooperation to hold investigations to see exactly what happened.
The Trump supporters are worried that it will make Donald look weak if we find the truth, but if they are so certain that the stories, including the NY Times are bogus then they should be the first to call for a Select Committee to investigate intelligence agencies' meddling in the election.
Morell also believes the U.S. should respond in kind to their interference.
See the full interview here.
