Tell nbc news that what started as a feud with Hillary Clinton quickly became an effort to damage the political process in the United States and at the center of it all, the russian president himself. This morning, nbc news has learned from Senior Intelligence officials that russian president Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the campaign to undermine the u. S. Election. The officials tell us that new information derived from diplomatic sources and spies working from u. S. Allies points directly to the russian president. With one high level official saying that putins role was to direct how the hacked material from democrats was used. His objectives, multifaceted. It began, one official says, as a vendetta against Hillary Clinton after the former secretary of state criticized russias parliamentary elections in 2011. We have serious concerns about the conduct of the election. But trying to hurt clintons chances with an effort to show corruption in american politics. Attempting to split off key American Allies hoping to prove the u. S. Is not a credible global leader. This stunning revelation comes after the cias recent assessment that the russian government wanted to elect donald trump, a view that the fbi and others dont fully endorse and neither does the president elect. Theres great confusion. Nobody really knows. Trump calling the assessment ridiculous. They have no idea if its russia or china or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace. The russians seemed to agree, telling richard engel, western media have gone beyond the reach of reason. And with the russians mounting, the question is, will president obama respond before he leaves office . President obama has already ordered a full Intelligence Community review of foreign efforts to influence the recent president ial election. Once the review is complete, intelligence officials will be ready to brief the congressional leadership, but the material is highly classified and what, if anything, will be shared with the public is still unclear. Just a few moments ago, we got this in from moscow. Putins spokesman, demetri peszkov, calling the allegations laughable nonsense. I dont think its a surprise that he would not want to embrace that he tried to manipulate the election. The president elect himself also reacting a short time ago on twitter. Donald trump tweeting, if russia or some other entity was hacking, why did the white house wait so long to act . If we knew this before election night, why didnt we do something . You think he has a legitimate point. I think he raises an interesting point. The head of the dnc, mr. Clapper and others on october 7th said at the highest levels, they were concerned about the russian interfering but never put a name on it and there is a lot of concern on capitol hill and elsewhere about why, if the president is now ordering a full scale investigation of this, why he didnt do so earlier in the fall. Cynthia mcfadden, thank you. Solid work. Joined now by International Security and diplomacy analyst. James, former supreme ally commander at admiral, thank you for your time this morning. Whats your genre action frera . Solid reporting. Gener hes a former kgp colonel and steeped. Its entirely logical that a unitary leader like Vladimir Putin would insist on driving the details of an operation like this. I think it sounds very credible. How should we respond . Well, ill give you a couple of ideas. First of all, it has to be proportional. We dont use cyber to drop the electoral grid in russia because of this but we could go after something proportional in their political system. One idea would be to expose the vast offshore holding after senior political figures to include president putin, additional, we could go after the way the russians use cyber to repress, to go after journalists, that could be exposed or made public. There are other things we could coat a more clandestine level and two ideas im sure are being considered. Why is it that the president elect of the United States seems to be so dismissive of the 17 Government Agencies who essentially said, this is what happened, russias behind it, theres been a number of additional reporting as well. This report. Why does he not believe any of that . I think youd have to address that question to president elect trump, but one obvious answer to it would be that it would undermine the confidence and credibility in his election. So he would have, i would say, a jaundiced eye as e he looked at this intel and as usual in the Intelligence Community, theres conflict in some of this. Every Intelligence Agency with high confidence believes the hacks into the political system. There is disagreement about the level of intent and the level of involvement. Well learn more when the congressional investigation gets under way. I know that you were at trump tower, you met with the president elect. Is this something that came up . Is this something the two of you talked about . We talked about cybersecurity. Well informed, concerned about it. Is he well mfed on it . Im sorry, i didnt mean to cut you off there. Not at all. He is well informed about the broad pattern of threat that the nation will be fatesicing and continuing to face, but the face i try to make, craig, put in a cabinet level official and take the director of National Intelligence and that officer of dni plus cybersecurity. Its on his mind. You said that in the past that donald trump did not grasp the issues facing this country. Did your opinion change after meeting with him . We did not talk specifically about the issues im most deeply concerned about, the idea of building a wall with mexico and getting out of nato, whether we ought to become closer to president putin, we talked more generally. So i think like all americans, ill be waiting to see what the actual policies are as they come out but i continue to be troubled by some of the statements ive heard during the campaign. Quickly bf lly before i let admiral. If this is something we knew about, this russian hacking, why didnt we do more . Earlier . I think it was a mistake not to do so. The only thing i could surmise is that its so highly classified and explosive, the Current Administration felt better to try to handle it in clandestine channels. I think that was a mistake. Did he offer you a job last week, admiral . Youd have to ask him that question. I think you just answered that question. Thank you. Glad you didnt take it. Still with us as well. Thanks a lot. I want to bring in senator karden. Senator, thank you so much for your time this morning. Let me start with a simple question here. Is what russia and president putin did, is it an act of war . Should it be considered an act of war . It clearly was an attack on our country, whether its by mouse, but they did try to compromise our election system. So it does require a response. Why havent we responded yet . Well, thats, of course, a question for the president. Theyre getting the information available. And hes certain considering how we do not only respond but how we could protect ourselves from future attacks from either russia or other unfriendly countries. So it does require a better way to protect ourselves and it does require a response. The president elect saying this morning via his preferred method of communication, not a News Conference but twitter, why did the white house wait so long to act . Why did they only complain after hillary lost . Is that a valid point . I was listening to the admirals response and i think he expressed how i feel about it also, but let me add one additional factor. The response would have come right in the middle of the end of campaign for president. I think president obama was concerned that he did not want to be interpreted to do something political to affect the outcome of the election. Regardless of what he did at that time, it would have been taken bipartisan and spun for or against particular candidates and i think he was concerned about that. What are you advising president obama to do, aside from an investigation with this final month in office . Its a good question. I do want him to respond to what has been done. Im pleased hes ordered an all out investigation and that will be made, i hope, at least partially public so the public will have additional information. I would hope he would endorse an independent commission to review whats happened. We had that after 9 11 when we were attacked and gives the public, i think, greater confidence that this is being done this a way that is broader than just a congressional investigation. Im for a congressional investigation but i think there should also be an independent Commission Review of this. I think all of that needs to be done hopefully set up prior to president obama leaving office on january 20th. As you know, we were supposed to hear from the president elect today. It would have been his first News Conference in roughly 140 days. He was going to talk about his relationship with his business empire, that thouchannouncement postponed. There are new concerns about con i conflicts of interest with his Adult Children. I want you to listen what Kellyanne Conway said a short time ago on morning joe. The president does have discretion to choose a staff of his liking and so that actually is true and that legal advice holds, that will open up possibilities. I will assure you one thing. Jared and ivanka to be the two family members that are most likely to take part in the administration . I think thats a fair assessment, but again, they will make those decisions in due course. So the child of a president , the spouse of a president can legally serve in some official administration position. Is that correct . Yes. Theres no prohibition. Theres no nepotism rule as far as the president s concerned. He can choose members of his family as part of his advisors or cabinet but theyre subject to the same rules as any other person who moves into that position in regards to conflicts, in regards to divesting of areas that could be a conflict of interest. I know you introduced the resolution in congress to get trump to sever all of his business ties by the time he takes office. Lets assume thats not going to go anywhere with republicans in control. Whats your next move on that come january 20th . Well, first, i was disappointed. The day is the 15th of december and the day we thought that president elect trump how he was going to divest his business interests to comply with the constitutional prohibitions with favors or gifts from foreign entities. This is constitutional and when he takes office, hell raise his right hand and swear hell support the constitution of the United States. By then, he must have divested himself control over his financial interests. Otherwise, he runs the risk of violating the constitution. Senator cardin, thank you for your time this morning. Thank you. N yahoo hacked again. The personal information of one billion people with yahoo email accounts compromised in the companys second massive data breach this year. Whats going on at yahoo . Well dig in next. And one of the investigative reporters about a new lead in the murder case of john binet ramsey. In. We had to climb up the mountain to get the injured hiker. He fell from, like, a rock. Hes been the one that has been rescued so many times. He said to me, today, i got to be the hero. avo the subaru share the love event has helped grant the wishes of over twelve hundred kids so far. Get a new subaru, and well donate two hundred and fifty dollars more to help those in need. Put a little love in your heart. Seconds can mean the difference between life and death. For partners in health, time is life. We have 18,000 people around the world. The microsoft cloud helps our entire staff stay connected and Work Together in real time to help those that need it. The ability to collaborate changes how we work. What we do together changes how we live. you gotta to be cool, calm, collected look your fear in the eye you gotta be shaking off the pressure gotta be taking your time had my ups, downs, runarounds my dark and despair but the best stuff came when all the sweat wasnt there you gotta say heyy hoo heyy hoo if you have a yahoo email account, theres a good chance you have been hacked. The latest breach, the largest email hack ever. One billion accounts. Yahoo revealing that the breach itself happened in august of 2013. Msnbcs ali velshi with more on this. Break it down. Were talking about one seventh of the worlds population. This was much more active in the old days. A lot of people have accounts they dont know they have. What this looks like. In terms of scope, this was from 2013. We just heard about it now. 2013 a billion. Earlier this year, in september, we heard about another yahoo breach 500 million. So were talking about 1. 5 billion people with yahoo. Friend finder, remember that from a long time ago . 400 million. Myspace, and i had a myspace account and i remember this from the old days when i thought i was going to be like a drummer. 360 million accounts and these are just the big one. So take a look at how many people are affected by this. This is really important. What did they get . They got everything. Names, email addresses, date of birth, phone numbers, and the security questions you use to retrieve those passwords. This is really important. Remember, first of all, change your passwords. I finally figured out how to do this, where i can figure out methods to have different passwords for Different Things because you probably used this yahoo password for Something Else and those security questions may appear elsewhere. What street did you live . Whos your best friend . Mix it up as well. I know you forget half the stuff but if theyve got this information, they can hack into other accounts. If it happened in august of 2013, why are we finding about it now . The answer we can never get with most corporations and after it was announced by verizon. Theres the bigger problem. 150,000 of those people hacked are u. S. Government and military employees, department of justice, cia, National Security agency and executive branch people. That becomes compromising. Thats not just your credit. A house in your name. This is addresses and locations of where some of these people, might even be covert agts. Government agents are working. So this is really serious and while i dont know what yahoos responsibility is in this yet, ef everybo everybody. Thank you, sir. I want to bring in anes, the first chief Technology Officer for the United States of america under president obama. Thanks for coming back again today, sir. I wanted to talk to you about this bauecause again, a billion people. Hacked email accounts. Staggering number. Should we now run under the assumption that anything we do on the internet is subject to prying eyes . Well, the assumption certainly is that the idea wed have a mote that would block bad people from our digital systems, that is the older method and likely not the right posture moving forward. Now we almost have to assume the attackers are in and the challenges, can we design our systems in such a way that even if theyre in, they dont really see anything . The information is encrypted and hard to understand or interpret and certainly difficult to reuse. Thats a posture that were thinking about as a country, as a nation, in the Global Economy really. On the future of data security. Why has it been so seemingly hard for some of the Biggest Companies in this country to stop this . To prevent these attacks . So, in the defense of companies, were in a very murky regulatory process. You as a consumer are voluntarily choosing to enroll in a service and giving you a response that says, heres how we plan to treat you. Were going to do our best and keep your information safe. And you dont reay have any much more Legal Protection beyond that. We have 47 states that have separate laws that says if there is a breach, got to be notified, but there really isnt a National Standard for how information is meant to be secure in this digital era. We increasingly use Digital Services for the right reasons for financial data, health care data, schools transcript data. How do we strengthen this security infrastructure . It seems like the hackers are so much smarter and better than we are at this. Well, the incentives. This is what the military might call asymmetrical warfare. The attacker only has to write a few lines of code to break into our systems and then they can find vulnerabilities. So youve got millions of potential but thus far been, hey, weve got a big moat. If we can identify, you can block it or in a spam folder or do Something Else with it. I want to pivot and talk about this other major hacking story today. Nbc, of course, reporting russias president Vladimir Putin played an active role in trying to influence our election. Again, you were the chief Technology Officer under president obama. This appears to have been something that we knew about a lot earlier than i think a lot of folks realized. How should we respond from a cybersecurity standpoint . Well, lets begin with an assumption which is there are people all over the world, nonstate actors and increasingly state sponsored actors who are attacking systems in the civilian economy and in the military systems as well as our general civilian Government Agencies. This happens every day. If you count the number of attacks, we are in a constant battle, so this is not a sort of a one time, gee, this is an unusual thing that a particular email server at the dnc might have been a subject of an attack. This is happening all the time. So theres clearly a defense posture. How do we strengthen the defense capacity of the country and weve been working