For nearly a decade, the U.S. government has been running two parallel tracks on this issue: what it privately considered plausible and what it was willing to say out loud. The official Intelligence Community Assessment, issued in 2023 and reaffirmed in 2025, concluded it was "very unlikely" that a foreign adversary was responsible. It used carefully calibrated and lawyerly language that seemed designed to close a door without closing the deadbolt. Meanwhile, Biden administration officials were privately telling victims at a White House meeting in late 2024: we believe you.
