About the hacking. At least more right than the naysayers. Some us only gradually accepted this theory with the benefit of hindsight. I'll use an an animal analogy.
They said there was a wolf in the goat pen. They fumbled initially with the evidence. They showed us its furs. But goats have furs too, and that was easy to dismiss offhand.
While it eventually emerges that there was a spotted hyena instead of a wolf in the goat pen, their instincts were right.