Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has just issued an assessment that the playbook and playoff strategy of the Green Bay Packers has been hacked in a malicious cyber incident by known actors under direction of the New York Giants organization.

Clapper’s key judgments in this assessment about Giants’ preferences and intent are drawn from the behavior of Giants-loyal sports figures, sports media, and pro-Giants sports-talk actors, all of whom the Giants either directly uses to convey messages or who are answerable to the Giants.

Clapper issued these key judgments:

Giants’ efforts to influence the 2016 NFL playoffs represent the most recent expression of Giants’ head coach Benjamin Lee "Ben" McAdoo’s long-standing desire to undermine the Green Bay-led liberal acquisition of a Division title, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous playoffs. We assess Giants General Manager Jerry Reese ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the NFL World Championship. Giants’ goals were to undermine public faith in the Green Bay Packers’ game strategies, denigrate Quarterback Rodgers, and harm his popularity and potential Superbowl title.

This Giants’ influence campaign followed a New York messaging strategy that blends these covert intelligence operations with overt efforts by Giants’ ownership agencies, NFL-funded sports media, third-party intermediaries, and paid sports-blog media users or "trolls."

DHS assesses that the types of systems Giants actors targeted or compromised were not involved in officiating operations.

We assess the Giants will apply lessons learned from its Reese-ordered campaign aimed at the NFL’s playoff process to future game strategies league-wide, including against Packer fans and their tailgating processes.