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U.S. intercepts capture senior Russian officials celebrating Trump win

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials - including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country's cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election - contributed to the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Moscow's efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of "actors" involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.

Those and other data points are at the heart of an unprecedented intelligence report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogs other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years.

The classified document, which officials said is over 50 pages, was delivered to President Obama on Thursday, and it is expected to be presented to Trump in New York on Friday by the nation's top spy officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr. and CIA Director John Brennan.

Given the president-elect's skepticism about the intelligence community - particularly its conclusions about Russia - the Trump Tower briefing has taken on the tenor of a showdown between the president-elect and the intelligence agencies he has disparaged.

"The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on Nov. 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did," a senior U.S. official said.

U.S. officials declined to say whether the intercepted communications were cited in the classified version of the report commissioned by Obama, and they emphasized that while the messages were seen as strong indicators of Moscow's intent and clear preference for Trump, they were not regarded as conclusive evidence of Russian intelligence agencies' efforts to achieve that outcome.

"There are a variety of different exhibits that make the case, different factors that have provided the intelligence community with high confidence" that Russia sought in part to help elect Trump, said a second senior U.S. official who has reviewed intelligence findings on Russia's cyber operations.

Officials emphasized that "signals intelligence," as such communication is known, is treated by analysts with caution because statements can be taken out of context and sophisticated adversaries including the Kremlin are adept at spreading disinformation.

U.S. officials who have reviewed the new report said it goes far beyond the brief public statement that Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued in October, accusing Russia of having "directed" cyber operations to disrupt the U.S. election, and concluding, in a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, that "only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

The new report incorporates material from previous assessments and assembles in a single document details of cyber operations dating back to 2008. Still, U.S. officials said there are no major new bombshell disclosures even in the classified report. A shorter, declassified version is expected to be released to the public early next week.

U.S. officials said that Russia's goals appear to have shifted over time. Moscow's initial hacking operations targeted almost every major candidate, including Trump's GOP rivals, as part of a fairly typical clandestine collection program.