Former CIA Director John Brennan on Tuesday — perhaps unwittingly — revealed the impotence of Barack Obama’s administration in confronting Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, Brennan said he became aware last summer of efforts by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election campaign. He said vigorous efforts by U.S. officials to deter Russia failed.

“They undertook these activities despite our strong protests and explicit warnings that they not do so.”

“They undertook these activities despite our strong protests and explicit warnings that they not do so,” he said.

Brennan said he was the first U.S. official to warn Russia. He said he spoke on August 4 with Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Service. He said he complained about Russian mistreatment of American diplomats and campaign interference.

“I told Mr. Bortnikov that if Russia had such a campaign under way, it would be certain to backfire,” he said.

Not only did it not backfire, according to the assessment of the U.S. intelligence agencies, but it appears to have succeeded spectacularly. Russian President Vladimir Putin helped engineer the defeat of a candidate he reportedly loathed, Hillary Clinton, and now has a divided America to boot.

Brennan suggested that Russian indifference to Obama administration warnings was not the result of opaque signals. He testified Tuesday that he told his counterpart that election meddling would destroy hopes of better relations and would “undermine constructive engagement, even on matters of mutual interest.”

Yet Russia apparently took no steps to alter its campaign. Obama reportedly warned Putin personally to “cut it out” in September, when they met face to face in China. But Obama did not take concrete public action until December, after the election already was over. He ejected 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives and imposed sanctions on Russia’s top-two intelligence agencies.

The administration also imposed penalties on four top officers of one of those services, the military intelligence unit.

Russia did not even bother to retaliate by expelling American diplomats in Moscow.

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Brennan testified that U.S. intelligence officials took convert steps to confront Russia.

“We were doing things behind the scenes to try to counter Russian activities,” he said. “We took actions in January in the last days of the administration in terms of … a number of Russian officials here and trying to clamp down on their intelligence activities.”

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But Brennan did not try to argue that those efforts succeeded. In fact, he warned to expect more of the same from Russia.

“They will continue to do this. I think they’re probably taking some lessons from this past experience,” he said. “I don’t believe that this is going to make them at all recoil and not engage in these types of things … They will further refine their tactics so that they can be as successful as possible in the future.”

Brennan said even with the election six months in the past, Russia continues to look for ways to press its advantage.

“The Russians are watching very carefully what’s going on in Washington right now, and they will try to exploit it for their own purposes,” he said.