(CNN) - The Washington Post is providing a detailed account of the Obama administration's struggle with Russian hacking into the 2016 presidential election.
The Post says it was sourcing deep inside the Russian government that helped lead the CIA to conclude Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered and directed the unprecedented cyber operation.
And that President Barack Obama approved planting cyber weapons inside critical Russian systems ready to activate if Putin didn't "cut it out."
The Washington Post starkly lays out the U.S. intelligence community's case, pointing not only at Russia meddling in the election, but Putin himself.
It detailed that intelligence sources had captured Putin's own instructions directing the broad hacking and misinformation campaign, plus, its goals, which included defeating or hurting Hillary Clinton in the election, and helping Donald Trump.
But the Post's interviews with former senior Obama administration officials reveals the pain, now among some of them, that more was not done to punish Russia.
One said "it's the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend. I feel like we sort of choked."
They say the administration was worried about appearing to try to influence the election themselves, as well as provoking Russia.
One official explained "Our primary interest in August, September and October was to prevent them from doing the max they could do."
And after the election, some of the harsher options for punishing Russia, like a massive cyberattack on them, or sweeping sanctions, faced concerns and roadblocks from a number of corners.
Former deputy national security advisor Tony Blinken defended the Obama administration on Friday.
"Maybe the judgment was wrong, maybe we should have acted differently. Maybe we should have done certain things that we didn't do. But given everything we were dealing with, given, first of all, the perception that Russia's main objective is undermine confidence in the elections, that was one thing that motivated us, to be careful how we played this in public," he said.
The Obama administration did set the ball rolling for a secret program to infiltrate Russia's infrastructure with cyberweapons, that can be controlled remotely, like cyber "bombs" to cripple Russia's systems.
Those are still in early stages.
"I wish that he and the administration would have acted differently here, but what's important now is we know what they did and we have a president today who sits in the Oval Office who doesn't appreciate the attack that occurred, that doesn't acknowledge it," said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-CA.
In the Russia investigation, Congressional probes continue.
The house intelligence committee is waiting to receive fired FBI director James Comey's memos and is planning a meeting next week with Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta, whose emails were hacked.
The White House again downplayed any affect Russia may have had.
"That not a single vote was changed and we're going to stand by that. We know Donald Trump won fairly and squarely,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president.
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