again, we're going to talk with ellen nakashima with the post about this in just a moment. but the way the post lays it out. they give two types of answers to that question. one of them is domestic to the u.s. and it is sort of exasperating to think about a national security matter like this having domestic political constraints about it but that is the way it is. the other one is not domestic, it is a different kind of constraint, that is the keep you up at night kind of thing. but the domestic political constraint that the post described was about donald trump making it a touch stone in his campaign that the elections were somehow rigged for hillary clinton when he was saying that the elections were rigged, the whole thing is rigged, he wasn't saying the russians were rigging our oelection, he was saying that the u.s. government, the obama administration or maybe even the clinton campaign, the democrats were somehow rigging the election to favor hillary clinton. and because he was campaigning on that, the political consequence of that in terms of this national security is

thank you very much indeed, ellen nakashima. happened today, and also the context that has made it important, but if you want more information on the story and all the allegations and statements that have come with it, you can find that wherever you wanted on the bbc news website or the bbc news app. let me quickly mention, before we end this half—hour, something that all of you watching, i am sure, are completely aware of. across the uk millions of people are voting in the general election. these are some of the party leaders. prime minister theresa may cast her vote in her constituency of maidenhead. every politician is notjust seeking to become a member of parliament, whether they are the leader of their party or not. jeremy corbyn, the leader of the opposition, labour party voted in islington north. tim farron is the leader of the liberal democrats. he voted in kendal in the north of england. polling stations will stay open until 10pm local time. that's about half an hour from now. very soon after they close, a glorious shot

joining us now is ellen nakashima, one of the reporters who wrote this blockbuster piece today at "the post." miss nakashima congratulations on this real achievement. thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> so one key piece of your reporting, and this is a complex piece, is that the obama administration was very worried as to what the russians might do in response if there was a strong american pushback, a strong american response to the attack before the election. is it clear that the obama administration had a clear understanding of the russians' capabilities, about what the russians could do if they really wanted to? >> so in fact the white house did undertake a pretty in-depth review of what the vulnerabilities of the electoral system were last summer, and they had the top voting system elections expert in the country heading up that team. and what they found was because there's something like 3,000 voting jurisdictions in the country, almost each one with its different type of election system or voting system, it would in fact actually be quite difficult for anyone to come in and

ellen nakashima was among the reporters who broke the story.president 0bama was so reluctant to act at the time. there was not a consensus amongst all the intelligence agencies that vladimir putin wanted donald trump to win. that was the conclusion of the cia, as you pointed out, at least in august, if not before. the other two main intelligence agencies, the fbi and the national security agency, did not have the means to corroborate that intelligence, at least not initially, not immediately. so there was not a consensus there. and perhaps even more importantly, the white house was consumed over the summer white house was consumed over the summer with a debate about whether, in fact, they should even go public with the fact that russia had hacked the dnc and was involved in interference. 0ne the dnc and was involved in interference. one of the primary concerns was that to do so would make them appear to political, 2—part ascent, in election season. that was an election season that was already very partisan. —— too partisan. they knew that there

we'll speak with ellen nakashima in a moment. i do want to do something else. i want to share with you something that's a little bit of a scoop that we just got tonight. at the start of this week, you might remember the "new york times" ran a story about the cia director mike pompeio. not every cia director is involved directly in things like the president's daily brief. not every cia director is at the white house every single day. "the times" was able to report at the beginning of the week that that warning from sally yates, that wasn't something that the upper echelons of the department of justice concluded and worked on in isolation. what "the times" reported at the beginning of this week is that the cia -- the cia officers were also involved in forming that assessment about mike flynn in reviewing the evidence that led to that warning. cia officers had apparently reviewed the intercepted communications between mike flynn and the russians. they've seen those intercepts directly. even so, despite that direct involvement of his agency, despite the cia being i

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