NSA Director: DNC Hack Didn’t Sway Election

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia—Navy Adm. Mike Rogers, who heads the National Security Agency and Army Cyber Command, said that he believed the publication of internal Democratic National Committee emails didn't ultimately sway the outcome of the election.

“I don't think in the end it had the effect [the foreign government] had hoped it might,” Rogers said during a panel at the Halifax International Security Forum.

Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had said earlier he didn't believe the hacks had made the definitive difference in the election which made Donald Trump the next president of the United States.

“I would agree with that assessment,” Rogers said Sunday.

The NSA chief didn't identify Russia as the foreign actor who had hacked the emails, but the intelligence community has generally agree that they were the source of the intrusion. Last week, Rogers had said there was no doubt that “a nation state” deliberately tried to interfere in the U.S. elections.

“There shouldn't be any doubt in anybody's mind. This was not something that was done casually. This was not something done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily,” Rogers said at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit on Tuesday. “This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”