After the intel was declassified in 2010, former Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn III described a 2008 cyberattack against the military’s Central Command as “the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever.” In response, the National Security Agency (NSA) launched the “Perfect Citizen” program and established U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) to keep hackers at bay. Both became fully operational in 2010. Yet the effectiveness of these systems is directly related to an administration’s response to the hacks they reveal. The Obama administration has never taken cybersecurity as seriously as is warranted. Thus its latest effort to “deep dive” into possible interference by the Russians in the 2016 election should be seen as the cynical farce it truly is.

Two papers by the Heritage Foundation reveal the staggering scope of attacks occurring on Obama’s watch:

• The Department of Defense’s (DOD) prescription drug database in 2011, by unnamed hackers, and multiple DOD Army systems by cyber-group Anonymous from October 2012–January 2013, and Russian hackers in 2015.
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams Database in May 2012 by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employee Xiafen “Sherry” Chen who was indicted for downloading “sensitive” files from the National Inventory of Dams.
• The U.S. Navy Marine Corps Intranet in September 2013 by Iranians.
• The Fannie Mae Website between August 2013 and early 2014 by a former IT contractor.
• The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2014, courtesy of malware on the Healthcare.gov website aimed at launching denial-of-service attacks on other websites.
• The White House in October 2014. No classified information was affected, but Obama’s schedule was accessible.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) in November 2014 that was not promptly reported, violating protocol. NOAA did not verify whether critical information had been taken or whether malware had entered into their systems in an attack attributed to the Chinese.
• The United States Postal Service (USPS) in November 2014, during which the personal information that included names, birth dates, Social Security Numbers, address, employment dates, emergency contact information of approximately 800,000 employees was compromised.
• The State Department’s email system in November 2014, attributed to the Russians and characterized as a major threat because classified material is transported through this unclassified avenue. This hack purportedly enabled a hack of the White House servers.
• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in April 2015. A malware virus was discovered in the agency’s administrative computer system, and a federal auditor raised the possibility that the FAA’s “mission critical air traffic control systems could be compromised.”
• The Internal Revenue Service in May 2015 by hackers who obtained the Social Security numbers, birth dates, and street addresses of what the Obama administration initially reported was approximately 100,000 taxpayers. By August they were forced to admit the number of affected taxpayer had more than tripled to 334,000.
• The U.S. Army Web site, Army.mil, in June 2015 by a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army who claimed responsibility via Twitter.
• The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in June 2015, characterized as the largest breach of federal networks ever. Following months of investigation, it was revealed that as many as 22.1 million current and former federal employees had reams of highly personal information that was accessed. In addition, as many as 5 million had their fingerprint information stolen.
• The Census Bureau in July 2015, resulting in the loss of more federal employee data.
• The Pentagon in August 2015, by an attack that originated in Russia. The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s email system for 4,000 employees was taken offline for two weeks following a “spear-phishing” attack whereby people opened infected emails.

Almost unbelievably, this is an incomplete list. During a March 2015 speech at the University of Missouri, former national intelligence director Mike McConnell revealed the Chinese “have penetrated every major corporation of any consequence in the United States and taken information,” and that other victims included the U.S. Congress, Pentagon and State Department.

Even worse, hearings following the OPM breach revealed several federal agencies have yet to comply with Federal Information Security Modernization Act requirements. Moreover, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed “federal agencies continued to have weaknesses in protecting their information and information systems.”

Columnist Bill Gertz gets it exactly right with regard to the Obama administration’s current effort to delegitimize the election of Donald Trump: “Any intelligence review should coincide with a companion investigation by Congress into why the president and his White House advisers for the past eight years rejected numerous calls from military, intelligence, and national security advisers to take aggressive action against states like Russia and China — action that could have prevented the kind of covert cyber warfare now being linked to Moscow.”

Gertz further reveals that long before these latest attacks — a U.S. intelligence official told him several months of major inter-agency meeting to address the problem were initiated in August 2011 — the administration was presented with several options to deter cyberattacks by the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans and Iranians. The official explained that the Obama administration rejected the options because they were considered “too aggressive and Obama responded that he would not engage in those types of activities.”

What was too aggressive? Everything ranging from economic sanctions and legal actions, to counter-cyberattacks were rejected. Only diplomatic talks were deemed reasonable.

And like Obama has bent over backwards to avoid associating Islam with terror attacks, the president sought to downplay cyberattacks in exactly the same manner. “Large-scale penetrations and theft of data from both U.S. government and private sector networks were falsely labeled ‘cyber espionage,’ ‘cyber vandalism,’ ‘cyber penetrations,’ and other terms by the president,” Gertz notes. “As long as the incidents were not labeled attacks, Obama ensured there would be no requirement for retaliation by the military or intelligence community.”

By contrast, Obama appears willing to aid a sleazy effort by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, who is supporting a request by 10 Electors to get an intelligence briefing prior to the Dec. 19 Electoral College vote confirming Trump’s victory — with the inference being the Russians tipped the scale in Trump’s favor.

Whether such a briefing would include the revelation Podesta himself may have precipitated the DNC hack by falling for a phishing scheme is anyone’s guess.

The ludicrousness of this gambit is underscored by two inconvenient realities: No one is even suggesting voting machines were hacked, or that Russian agents fanned out across the nation and intimidated voters. Thus, we are again left with the assertion “stupid” Americans were fooled into voting for Trump.

“That the White House has only now gone into hyperdrive over this ‘dangerous’ threat is the ultimate hypocrisy,” the New York Post editorial board states adding that the real story here “is about a party in denial about the causes of its devastating defeat — and which apparently would rather burn down the Republic than accept the truth.”

And with each passing day, more Americans than ever can see it.