The CIA Leak About the DNC & Podesta Leaks: The Ad Hominem Fallacy Run Amok

Today’s Daily Freak Out relates to a WaPoo story claiming that a “secret” (not any more!) CIA study has concluded that Russians with “links to the Russian government” provided Wikileaks with the hacked DNC and Podesta emails. (I only note in passing the irony of leaking a document to stoke outrage about leaks. Evidently judgments about leaking are instrumental and situational.)

If the CIA has identified individuals who at the very least are accessories, presumably the FBI and DOJ will launch criminal investigation and (if the evidence is a rock solid as the CIA claims) indict them. Unless that happens, I put the credibility of this report somewhere around the level of Curve Ball and aluminum tubes.

Even the “secret” report acknowledges that the CIA has no evidence that these purported individuals were directed by the Russian government. Instead, the CIA infers that the Russian government intended to influence the election based on the (alleged) fact that the RNC was also hacked, but its communications were not leaked.

Can the CIA actually be this stupid? (Rhetorical question alert!)

If the DNC and Podesta emails were damaging, it was because they revealed highly unflattering information about Hillary Clinton and her legions of flying monkeys in Democratic Party circles. The leaked documents revealed that the DNC was actively partisan in its support for Hillary, and took active measures to rig the process against Bernie Sanders. (Which is why I still wouldn’t rule out that a disgruntled Bernie-ite in the DNC played a role here.) Individually and collectively, the emails cemented the narrative of a corrupt Hillary and a corrupt party establishment rigging the system against Sanders: the narrative was already out there, with plenty of evidence to back it up, and these emails just put the cherry on the sundae. They revealed that Hillary and the Democratic National Committee were actively anti-democratic.

It is quite possible that RNC emails would have also revealed a party apparatus intent on undermining an insurgent candidate. Who would have been Trump. That is, whereas the DNC and Podesta emails showed Hillary and her minions to be the perpetrators of an offense, the most likely scenario is that the RNC documents would have shown Trump to be the target and victim of a campaign to disable his candidacy. That would have actually played to Trump’s benefit! It would have fit right in with his narrative of a man fighting the system and the establishment. It would have confirmed all of the criticism he had leveled against the party during the primaries.

Can you see the difference here? If your IQ is above 85 or thereabouts, I presume so. But then apparently you would be disqualified for working as a crack analyst at the CIA.

And let’s always keep one fact in mind. Those who decry the impact of the leaks are effectively taking the position that it would have been better for the American people to have cast their votes in ignorance. That the problem with the leaks wasn’t that they were lies: it was that they revealed unpleasant truths. The provenance of the documents, and how they came to light is secondary or tertiary: the content is primary. If your defense is “it’s an outrage I got caught and those who caught me are dirty bastards”, you deserve no deference or sympathy.

This controversy is the ad hominem fallacy run amok, that it is the speaker (or the source) not the substance that matters.  If revelations about your conduct contributed to the election of a mercurial political neophyte, your conduct, not the party that brought it to light (no matter their motives) is to blame.