Last night, NSA Chief Adm. Michael S. Rogers told the Wall Street Journal that Republicans were “consciously" assisted by the Russian state’s email hackers looking for a ‘”specific effect” in this year’s general election. In October, the NSA co-signed a written statement naming Russia as the culprit in the email hacks, which was jointly released by America’s intelligence community except the FBI.

The NSA Chief's carefully chosen words words doubly called out the Russian email hacks out as deliberate. In the authoritarian Russian state, run by ex-KGB intelligence officer Vladimir Putin, there can only be once source of such a deliberate political action; from the top. Admiral Rogers said:

“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s minds, this was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”