In your alternative, what does confident mean? Which specific people does "Russian Government" refer to? What does directed mean? What does compromise mean? The

In your alternative, what does confident mean? Which specific people does "Russian Government" refer to? What does directed mean? What does compromise mean? The English language is not code that can be debugged, you can second guess the semantics of anything. If credibility is the only thing at stake here, then the legalese is irrelevant. As you noted, it seems like everyone besides you took this statement to be an unambiguous accusation. If it turns out to be wrong, the technical wording will not matter. James Clapper could not maintain credibility by claiming "Oh no you misunderstood, we were talking about a leak from 5 years ago". From a PR standpoint, that would look a lot worse than just saying "We screwed up, sometimes the evidence is misleading".