The director of the United States’ data intelligence agency says there should be no “doubt in anybody’s mind” that there was a conscious effort by a foreign nation to influence the US presidential election.

National Security Agency chief Admiral Michael Rogers made the comment in response to a question about WikiLeaks and the influence the publishing of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s minds,” Mr Rogers told a Wall Street Journal conference.

“This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily.

“This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”

"A conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect" NSA chief on WikiLeaks https://t.co/kvmrTyVE30 #WSJCEOCouncil pic.twitter.com/AT2pxK2ROR

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 15, 2016

Mr Rogers did not name the country in question or elaborate further, but US intelligence officials, including the NSA, have previously suspected Russia of interfering in the election process.

In October, intelligence agencies blamed Moscow for supplying WikiLeaks with the hacked emails belonging to Mrs Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta.

It accused Russia’s “senior-most officials” of authorising the hacks in order to interfere with the US presidential election, and named WikiLeaks, DCleaks, and a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer 2.0 as being part of a “Russia-directed” attack.

The Obama administration also accused Russia of being behind the hacks.

“The US intelligence community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement (see below).

This is big: DHS and Director of National Intelligence goes out and blames Russia for the DNC hacks. pic.twitter.com/3Ww5VBUHL4

— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) October 7, 2016

WikiLeaks posted almost 20,000 emails and classified documents from top DNC officials over the past year, and Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the GRU, was found to be the source, The New York Times reported.

A private security group, Dell SecureWorks, traced back the hacks used in GRU’s “spear phishing” technique – which involves sending fake emails to trick recipients into clicking on malicious links or give up their passwords – and found more than 100 emails targeting the Clinton campaign.

Calls for Senate investigation into Russian hacks

On Tuesday, South Carolina senator and respected Republican Lindsey Graham said he wants the Senate to open an investigation into whether Vladimir Putin and the Russian government interfered with the election.

“Assuming for a moment that we do believe that the Russian government was controlling outside organisations that hacked into our election, they should be punished,” Mr Graham told reporters.

“Putin should be punished.”

According to University of Melbourne’s US Election Watch editor James Cahill, a Senate investigatory committee has significant power and would help answer who committed the hacks.

“Congressional committees both in the Senate and the House have real teeth, they often have the power of subpoena and to force people to testify and they can offer immunity,” Mr Cahill told The New Daily.

“They can also subpoena documents. They have real investigative teeth.”

Another senior Republican senator, John McCain, has cautioned against “resetting” relations with Russia following Mr Putin’s call to improve its relationship with the United States.

“We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbours, threatened America’s allies, and attempted to undermine America’s elections,” Senator McCain said in a statement.

Mr Cahill said: “From a political standpoint I’m pleased to see that this hasn’t been forgotten because in many ways this was the most underreported aspect of the election.”

“It really was a shocking development that a foreign power did everything they could to put their finger on the scale of our election, and actually had a breakthrough.”