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Trump Struggles As Furor Grows Over Reported Russian Bounty Offer To Kill U.S. Troops


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Trump struggles as furor grows over reported Russian bounty offer to kill U.S. troops

Laura King
LA TimesJune 28, 2020, 3:34 PM EDT
 
 
President Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. <span class="copyright">(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)</span>
President Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

President Trump, confronted with a damaging report that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill American and allied troops in Afghanistan, declared Sunday on Twitter that he was never briefed about the finding by U.S. intelligence.

Democrats including Trump’s prospective presidential rival, Joe Biden, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharply criticized Trump’s seeming indifference to the explosive report in Friday’s New York Times. Neither Trump nor other administration officials have specifically denied the report, which has since been confirmed by several other news organizations.

On Sunday, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming joined in the criticism, saying that if the information was genuine, the White House needed to explain why Trump was not told, and why the administration has done nothing in response.

The core of the story is that U.S. spy agencies concluded several months ago that a Russian military intelligence unit had offered secret bounties for attacks on coalition troops. The matter was discussed in late March by the National Security Council, and European allies including Britain were also made aware of the findings, the story said. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the first word of the Russian plan came as early as January from military and intelligence officials in Afghanistan.

 

The reports hit the White House at an already troubled juncture. Multiple national polls show Biden outpacing Trump, and the president and his team have struggled to craft a coherent message amid a drumbeat of bad news: a surge in U.S. coronavirus cases that now exceed 2.5 million, the resulting economic carnage and the fallout from massive racial-justice protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Sunday, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who helped run Trump’s 2016 campaign, said on ABC’s “This Week” that "he will lose" his reelection bid “if he doesn’t change course, both in terms of the substance of what he is discussing and the way that he approaches the American people.”

So far, the White House response to the story has not been to lay out any response to Russia, but simply to insist that Trump had not been personally briefed.

The office of Trump’s handpicked director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe — who has been in his post for only a month, and was a controversial choice because of his lack of relevant experience and his avid partisanship as a congressman from Texas — released a statement late Saturday saying that neither Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence was “ever briefed on any intelligence” described in the story.

But intelligence experts suggested that the White House defense appeared to be largely a semantic one, perhaps resting on the material being included in the written daily intelligence brief that the president is known to avoid reading, rather than presented to him orally.

David Priess, a former CIA analyst and intelligence briefer, described several scenarios under which Trump and those around him could have been made aware of the assessment. The striking part, he said in a Twitter posting, was that the White House had not addressed the substance of the report, nor publicly expressed determination to get to the bottom of it.

“Why hasn’t the commander in chief responded to such a grave development?” he asked.

Trump, who spent Sunday at his Virginia golf property, referred in a pair of tweets to the “so-called attacks on our troops,” attacked the report as “Fake News” and wrote that “nobody briefed me or told me.”

But while avoiding a direct denial of the report’s underlying assertions, the president seemed to suggest the information might not trouble him much even if true.

“There have not been many attacks on us,” he wrote.

At least nine U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, and 20 last year, out of nearly 2,400 American military fatalities in the course of the long conflict.

Biden hit Trump on the issue Saturday, saying that if the report was true, Trump’s inaction represented “a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation, to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way.”

The former vice president described the episode as a continuation of Trump’s “embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself” before Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Biden, whose campaign is centered on virtual appearances because of the coronavirus pandemic, made his remarks at an online town hall.

Pelosi, interviewed Sunday on "This Week," said the Russian bounty report revived longstanding questions about Trump’s affinity for Putin, which date back to U.S. intelligence findings that Moscow interfered on his behalf in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has on many occasions gone out of his way to publicly defer to the Russian leader, and in recent weeks, he has pressed to restore Russia to the meetings of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations, from which it was excluded after its invasion of Crimea in 2014.

“This is as bad as it gets, and yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score,” Pelosi said of the bounty report, suggesting that the president might be behaving under some sort of duress.

“I don’t know what the Russians have on the president — politically, personally, financially, or whatever it is,” said the San Francisco Democrat. “Now he is saying this is fake news – why would he say that? Why wouldn’t he say, ‘Let’s look into it and see what this is?’”

Cheney, writing on Twitter, said the White House needed to disclose “who did know and when?” about the intelligence assessment, and to detail “what has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable.”

Former national security advisor John Bolton, who was ousted from the White House last September, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump’s “fundamental focus” was not on national security, or protecting American troops.

“So what is the presidential reaction?” asked Bolton, author of a scathing White House memoir.

“It’s to say, ‘It’s not my responsibility. No one told me about it.’”

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-struggles-furor-grows-over-193439123.html

 

Perhaps if the intelligence community would present their daily briefings in coloring book format with a cartoon Donald on the cover holding a Nobel Peace Prize, he would be more apt to flip through the pages and educate himself.  As always, just my opinion.

 

GO RV, then BV

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Who would like to make a wager that this is another DEEP-STATE attempt to bring down the POTUS! Notice the way the article is written with 'anonymous' sources from the Intelligence AGENCIES. This is like deja vu all over again.

 

So if this quote is TRUE, then what is the uproar:

 

"There have not been many attacks on us,” he wrote.

At least nine U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, and 20 last year, out of nearly 2,400 American military fatalities in the course of the long conflict"

 

@Shabibilicious,

 

You really need to get counseling...this TDS has got to be a physchosis that keeps you up at night. For your health and the health of those around, please reach out to get some help.

 

Indy

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1 minute ago, Indraman said:

Who would like to make a wager that this is another DEEP-STATE attempt to bring down the POTUS! Notice the way the article is written with 'anonymous' sources from the Intelligence AGENCIES. This is like deja vu all over again.

 

So if this quote is TRUE, then what is the uproar:

 

"There have not been many attacks on us,” he wrote.

At least nine U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, and 20 last year, out of nearly 2,400 American military fatalities in the course of the long conflict"

 

@Shabibilicious,

 

You really need to get counseling...this TDS has got to be a physchosis that keeps you up at night. For your health and the health of those around, please reach out to get some help.

 

Indy

 

Got a solid 10 hours last night.....It's way past time you and yours admit Trump's ridiculous follies are dragging his supporters down with him.  He has done nothing to bring this country together....to support him is to support division.  (TDS) Trump Demigod Syndrome truly is an issue....on this we agree.

 

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Politics

Trump on defensive over reports Russia paid bounties for killing U.S. troops

 
Christopher Wilson
Senior Writer
,
Yahoo NewsJune 29, 2020
 
 
President Donald Trump smiles before addressing members of the military during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump smiles before addressing members of the military during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Trump faces a new setback to his reelection campaign in the form of reports  that he failed to act in response to Russia paying bounties to Afghan militants for killing American troops. 

Stalwart backers of the president including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wy. have raised questions about how the matter was handled, and at least two groups opposing Trump, including one representing military veterans, cut and released ads savaging him over the issue.

According to a Friday New York Times report later corroborated by the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, a Russian spy program in Afghanistan was offering bounties to Taliban-aligned militants to target coalition troops, including American soldiers. The Times reported that Trump was briefed on it in late March. The Washington Post reported Sunday evening that intelligence sources had connected an unknown number of U.S. casualties to the program, based on interviews with captured militants.

The Associated Press also reported that Trump was briefed on the bounty system earlier this year. The president, however, has denied it, saying that neither he, Vice President Mike Pence nor chief of staff Mark Meadows had been told about the program. Richard Grenell, who served as acting director of national intelligence until last month, said “I never heard this.” Russia and the Taliban have both denied the accuracy of the story.

In recent months Trump has urged the readmission of Russia to the G-7 group of major economic powers, a leading goal of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The organization expelled Russia over its invasion and occupation of part of Ukraine in 2014.

Trump wrote Sunday night that “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or [Pence]. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News [New York Times] , wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”

The Washington Post reported in 2017 that Russia-related material was sometimes not verbally addressed in the daily briefing to avoid angering the president, who has been friendly toward Putin and does not acknowledge Russia’s role in helping his 2016 campaign. 

CIA Director Gina Haspel and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper are yet to weigh in on the issue.

Trump was responding to a tweet by Graham, who had said earlier Sunday, “Imperative Congress get to the bottom of recent media reports that Russian GRU units in Afghanistan have offered to pay the Taliban to kill American soldiers with the goal of pushing America out of the region.” 

“If reporting about Russian bounties on US forces is true, the White House must explain: 1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the PDB? 2. Who did know and when? 3. What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?” asked Cheney.

CNN reported Monday morning that the White House was planning a congressional briefing on the bounty reports but didn’t offer details about where or who is invited.

Presumptive Democratic nominee and former vice president Joe Biden was critical of Trump on the issue over the weekend.

“Not only has he failed to sanction or impose any kind of consequences on Russia for this egregious violation of international law, Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin,” Biden said Saturday during a virtual town hall event, adding, “His entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale. It’s a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation, to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way.”

The controversy comes amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 125,000 Americans and consistent national polling that shows Trump currently trailing Biden nationally and in swing states ahead of November’s election.

VoteVets, a Democratically aligned armed force veterans group, released a 30-second video ad on Twitter charging that Trump betrayed the troops.

 

Donald Trump can take all his empty words about respecting our service and shove them. #TRE45ON #TraitorTrump

 
Embedded video
 
 
 
 

“If you’re going to act like a traitor, you don’t get to thank us for our service,” concludes the ad, which calls Putin Trump’s “Russian master.” The ad has more than 2.5 million views as of Monday morning.

The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, released their own ad on Saturday evening.

 

Putin paid a bounty to kill American soldiers. @realDonaldTrump knew about it but did nothing. How can Trump lead America when he can't even defend it?

 
Embedded video
 
 
 
 

“Putin pays the Taliban cash to slaughter our men and women in uniform and Trump is silent, weak, controlled,” states the ad, which has more than 11 million views, concluding, “When Trump tells you he stand by the troops, he’s right – just not our troops.”

George Conway, a Lincoln Project founder and husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, began to target Pence on Twitter Monday, urging his followers to ask the vice president, “Were you or the president told orally, on paper, or electronically, about the Russians paying bounties for the killing of American soldiers?  When did you first learn? Did anyone say the intel was bad?”

NBC News reported that Pence didn’t answer a question about the bounties on Sunday.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-response-russia-bounty-taliban-afghanistan-american-troops-killed-145439960.html

 

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Another hit piece with unconfirmed sources going to turn into another bogus investigation. 

He said he was not notified. No one believes him. If he did know about it and had taken action he would have been 

branded reckless for putting our troops further in harms way. 

No matter what he does he can't win. 

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28 minutes ago, nstoolman1 said:

Another hit piece with unconfirmed sources going to turn into another bogus investigation. 

He said he was not notified. No one believes him. If he did know about it and had taken action he would have been 

branded reckless for putting our troops further in harms way. 

No matter what he does he can't win. 

 

That certainly seems to be the narrative Trump and his handlers are pushing.....Maybe the "White Power" retweet will provide the needed distraction he likes to deploy in these situations.  Time will tell.  :peace:

 

GO RV, then BV

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2 hours ago, Shabibilicious said:

Spoken like a "true" Christian with nothing but love in his heart.  <_<  Matthew 7:1 comes to mind.  Guess we're all guilty.  

 

GO RV, then BV

 

Perhaps if the intelligent media would present their daily briefings in coloring book format with a cartoon Shabby Scooby on the cover holding a Morality Peace Prize, you would be more apt to flip through the pages and educate yourself. 

 

Dang I'm FUNNY :lmao:

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I am sick and tired of the left. They are just trying to stir up something else that is not there. I have watched story after story on this. It is an anonymous source again. In fact,  there have been a number in the intel community that don't believe this story and say that it hasn't been vetted. Of course the lsm will find their little minions that will talk about it and spin their little web of lies.

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Politics

AP sources: White House aware of Russian bounties in 2019

 
JAMES LaPORTA  Associated PressJune 29, 2020
 
 
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Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.

The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump or other officials’ awareness of Russia’s provocations in 2019. The White House has said Trump was not — and still has not been — briefed on the intelligence assessments because they have not been fully verified. However, it is rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of a doubt before it is presented to top officials.

Bolton declined to comment Monday when asked by the AP if he had briefed Trump about the matter in 2019. On Sunday, he suggested to NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump was claiming ignorance of Russia’s provocations to justify his administration’s lack of a response.

“He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” Bolton said.

The revelations cast new doubt on the White House’s efforts to distance Trump from the Russian intelligence assessments. The AP reported Sunday that concerns about Russian bounties were also included in a second written presidential daily briefing earlier this year and that current national security adviser Robert O’Brien had discussed the matter with Trump. O’Brien denies he did so.

On Monday night, O'Brien said that while the intelligence assessments regarding Russian bounties "have not been verified,” the administration has “been preparing should the situation warrant action.”

The administration’s earlier awareness of the Russian efforts raises additional questions about why Trump did not take any punitive action against Moscow for efforts that put the lives of Americans servicemembers at risk. Trump has sought throughout his time in office to improve relations with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, moving earlier this year to try to reinstate Russia as part of a group of world leaders it had been kicked out of.

Officials said they did not consider the intelligence assessments in 2019 to be particularly urgent, given that Russian meddling in Afghanistan is not a new occurrence. The officials with knowledge of Bolton’s apparent briefing for Trump said it contained no “actionable intelligence,” meaning the intelligence community did not have enough information to form a strategic plan or response. However, the classified assessment of Russian bounties was the sole purpose of the meeting.

The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the highly sensitive information.

The intelligence that surfaced in early 2019 indicated Russian operatives had become more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2012 during the Obama administration.

The National Security Council and the undersecretary of defense for intelligence did hold meetings regarding the intelligence. The Pentagon declined to comment and the NSC did not respond to questions about the meetings.

Concerns about Russian bounties flared anew this year after members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in U.S. currency. The funds bolstered the suspicions of the American intelligence community that the Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and other linked associations.

The White House contends the president was unaware of this development as well.

The officials told the AP that career government officials developed potential options for the White House to respond to the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, which was first reported by The New York Times. However, the Trump administration has yet to authorize any action.

The intelligence in 2019 and 2020 surrounding Russian bounties was derived in part from debriefings of captured Taliban militants. Officials with knowledge of the matter told the AP that Taliban operatives from opposite ends of the country and from separate tribes offered similar accounts.

The officials would not name the specific groups or give specific locations in Afghanistan or time frames for when they were detained.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, denied that Russian intelligence officers had offered payments to the Taliban in exchange for targeting U.S. and coalition forces.

The U.S. is investigating whether any Americans died as a result of the Russian bounties. Officials are focused in particular on an April 2019 attack on an American convoy. Three U.S. Marines were killed after a car rigged with explosives detonated near their armored vehicles as they returned to Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military installation in Afghanistan.

The Marines exchanged gunfire with the vehicle at some point; however, it’s not known if the gunfire occurred before or after the car exploded.

Abdul Raqib Kohistani, the Bagram district police chief, said at the time that at least five Afghan civilians were wounded after the attack on the convoy, according to previous reporting by the AP. It is not known if the civilians were injured by the car bomb or the gunfire from U.S. Marines.

The Defense Department identified Marine Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, of Newark, Delaware; Sgt. Benjamin Hines, 31, of York, Pennsylvania; and Cpl. Robert Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, New York, as the Marines killed in April 2019. The three Marines were all infantrymen assigned to 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines, a reserve infantry unit headquartered out of Garden City, New York.

Hendriks' father told the AP that even a rumor of Russian bounties should have been immediately addressed.

“If this was kind of swept under the carpet as to not make it a bigger issue with Russia, and one ounce of blood was spilled when they knew this, I lost all respect for this administration and everything,” Erik Hendriks said.

Marine Maj. Roger Hollenbeck said at the time that the reserve unit was a part of the Georgia Deployment Program-Resolute support Mission, a recurring six-month rotation between U.S. Marines and Georgian Armed Forces. The unit first deployed to Afghanistan in October 2018.

Three other service members and an Afghan contractor were also wounded in the attack. As of April 2019, the attack was under a separate investigation, unrelated to the Russian bounties, to determine how it unfolded.

The officials who spoke to the AP also said they were looking closely at insider attacks — sometimes called “green-on-blue” incidents — from 2019 to determine if they are also linked to Russian bounties.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/ap-sources-white-house-aware-023153573.html

 

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Russia intelligence 'may have been' in Trump brief but wasn't deemed 'actionable,' top Republican says

 
Josh Lederman and Ken Dilanian and Carol E. Lee and Courtney Kube and Kristen Welker  NBC NewsJune 29, 2020
 
 

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration told Republican members of Congress on Monday that intelligence about potential Russian bounties may have been included at some point in the President's Daily Brief but not conveyed to President Donald Trump in a formal threat briefing because it wasn't yet "actionable," the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said.

"I believe it may have been" in the written President's Daily Brief, or PDB, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in an interview.

Referring to the president, McCaul said: "I think the way the process works is that he gets briefed about three times a week on sort of actionable, credible items. And the decision was made that this was not at that point in time a credible, actionable piece of intelligence. And if at any point it did, it would be raised to his attention."

Related:

McCaul was one of eight House Republicans briefed in the Situation Room of the White House on Monday by the White House chief of staff, national security adviser and national intelligence director. A group of eight House Democrats was set to receive a similar briefing Tuesday morning.

The White House has insisted that Trump never received a "briefing" about intelligence indicating that Russia offered bounties to Afghan militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops. But both the White House and the national intelligence director's office have declined to say whether the information was in the PDB, the highly classified document produced for the president and other top officials, prompting speculation that Trump may simply have not read his briefing materials.

McCaul, who said he emerged from the briefing with deep concerns that the intelligence may be correct, said lawmakers were told that no U.S. service members had died as a result of Russia's paying Afghan militants to kill them.

"Their answer was no," McCaul said. "The intelligence had come out in January. It's right around the time of peace talks" in which the U.S. was negotiating with the Taliban for a temporary reduction in violence as a precursor to a broader political settlement.

The remarks add to deepening confusion about whether a Russian bounty offer was ever acted upon and when the U.S. learned about it. An official familiar with the intelligence said it showed that U.S. troops and Afghan civilians did die as a result, although other officials have indicated that that hasn't been corroborated. The Associated Press reported late Monday that the White House learned of the intelligence in early 2019, a year earlier than other reports have indicated.

Since the allegations erupted in the media, Trump has asserted that the intelligence community didn't find it credible. But in another indication that the national security community apparently took the intelligence seriously, McCaul said the Trump administration officials disclosed that changes had been made in protocols to protect U.S. service members operating in the region, known as "force protection," in response.

"They did stress that fact that they did everything possible to protect our forces over there," McCaul said. "And the record, according to them, the fact no one had been killed, you know, I think speaks to that."

 

Still, McCaul and other Republicans left the hearing calling for swift action to respond if the intelligence is corroborated. McCaul said that if the allegations prove true, the U.S. should impose heavy sanctions on the GRU, the Russian military intelligence unit implicated by the intelligence.

McCaul also said any discussion about allowing Russia back into the Group of 7 nations "should be off the table." Trump has repeatedly advocated for allowing President Vladimir Putin back into the club of nations, from which he was expelled in 2014 in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea.

The House Republicans were told that the National Security Council was vetting the intelligence after various intelligence agencies disagreed about its veracity, McCaul said, with one intelligence agency, which he didn't identify, having filed a "dissenting view."

Still, several months have passed since the intelligence first came in, and McCaul acknowledged that it was unclear whether the NSC had been actively validating or seeking more information before the allegations became public in a New York Times article, triggering massive public pressure for answers.

"That's a very good question. What they told me that was that they had been in the process of vetting through the NSC," McCaul said. He added that CIA Director Gina Haspel and John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, were embarking on a "scrub of all the intelligence data out there to check for the veracity and credibility."

 

https://news.yahoo.com/russia-intelligence-may-trump-brief-034255828.html

 

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Trump Officials Didn’t Want to Tell Him About the ‘Russian Bounties’

a76e9ca0-ba9f-11e7-afbd-e700b0f36d78_daily_beast.png
Erin Banco, Asawin Suebsaeng
,
The Daily BeastJune 30, 2020
 
JONATHAN ERNST
JONATHAN ERNST

The Trump administration has for years gathered intelligence about foreign powers, including Russia and Iran, using financial means to support and encourage armed militants in Afghanistan, according to six current and former U.S. intelligence and national security officials. And, those officials said, the president has been briefed about those wide-ranging efforts.

The Taliban Peace Deal Might Have Been Had Many Years and Thousands of Lives Ago

One current senior national security official and two other former officials familiar with intelligence gathering in Afghanistan said the Trump administration has closely tracked ways in which Iran uses cash to support militants in the Haqqani Network who have killed U.S. soldiers.

But when intelligence emerged earlier this year that Russia had concocted a specific plan to pay bounties to mercenaries to kill American soldiers, intelligence and national security leaders did not brief the president in person. A person with knowledge of the situation says that although they are aware that the intelligence has circulated in the White House and within Trump’s own national security apparatus, they were unaware of any direct, face-to-face briefing that the president had received.

The subject of what the president knew when—or if he knew anything at all— about the Russian bounties has become a major issue in Washington. "We need to understand why the President wasn't briefed, who knew about it and when, and what our response to Russia will be if these reports turn out credible,” Republican Rep. Bob Wittman on the House Armed Services Committee said in a statement. “If this intelligence is determined to be true, this is another in a long list of escalations of aggression from Russia.”

Multiple and sometimes contradictory reports have appeared about the extent and timing of information available to the president.

On Monday night, the Associated Press wrote that senior White House officials knew about “classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans” in “early 2019,” a year earlier than previously reported. How detailed and specific that intelligence may have been remains unclear.

According to the AP, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton has “told colleagues” that he briefed President Donald Trump personally about the bounty issue in March 2019. But Bolton, who is now promoting a book after extended silence about his time in the White House, “did not respond” to the AP’s queries about the supposed briefing, and the third-person account remains unconfirmed. 

CNN reported on Monday evening that information about the Russian bounty offers was contained in at least one edition of the President’s Daily Brief. According to the New York Times the written briefing was delivered in February, and the information about the Russian bounties circulated widely in the intelligence community in May. The AP report says the intelligence first made its way into one PDB, as these documents are called, more than a year ago.

The AP noted that when Bolton appeared Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press he suggested Trump claims ignorance to justify inaction. “He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” Bolton said.

But the problem is not just a matter of dissembling, according to several sources, it’s a matter of Trump not wanting to know about intelligence outside his comfort zone, and the reluctance of officials to push information on him they know he will resist, especially if their conclusions are less than clear-cut. Those may go into a PDB, but not get mentioned in a face to face briefing.

Intelligence coming out of Afghanistan, with its many contending factions and shifting alliances, can be especially problematic. The Daily Beast reported in 2015 that the Taliban were developing their ties to Russia, ostensibly to fight the Afghan branch of the so-called Islamic State. Over the last five years, according to Afghan sources, that cooperation has extended to include Russian-Taliban cooperation with Iran, with its well-known record paying bounties for attacks. But the situation has grown even more complicated of late amid allegations by the Taliban that ISIS recruits may have worked with former senior Afghan government intelligence officers to plot the assassination of Trump’s peace negotiator, Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad. They are said to believe Khalilzad is selling out to the Taliban.

The person cited above with knowledge of the intelligence circulating at the White House about the Russian offer of bounties to kill Americans told The Daily Beast they did not dispute accounts suggesting the information had appeared in at least one PDB. But the source noted that the chances that Trump would have read that by himself are “basically zero.” 

A former Trump administration official with knowledge about the president’s intelligence briefings said the assessment about the Russian bounties should have been brought to the president directly. But that does not mean that happened.

Within the intelligence and national security community, some officials raised questions about the methods used to craft the assessment and whether the information had been corroborated through other sources. Others believed the intelligence reveals a significant change in Russia’s behavior in Afghanistan— and poses immediate risks to U.S. troops on the ground, according to two individuals read in on the conversations surrounding the intelligence assessment.

The reluctance to brief President Trump face to face followed an old and familiar pattern, officials say. Although intelligence officials regularly brief presidents about sensitive matters they are not always 100 percent confident about, top officials in that space and in the national security community have chosen several times to avoid briefing President Trump, two current and two former senior officials involved in the briefing process told The Daily Beast. 

“If there was evidence…even if thinly sourced, there’s an option to bring it to the president’s attention but let him know it is thinly sourced,” one former senior intelligence official said. “If it’s less important information, then the intelligence community usually wants to have more confidence. But the intelligence community always makes their confidence level clear.”

Officials said there’s trepidation about briefing the president about Russia, in particular, given his past sensitivity to the subject, and that there’s concern he may post on social media about the intelligence.

“Trump has little patience for intelligence briefings, especially when the news isn’t good for him. These briefings happen irregularly, and are often free-for-alls,” one former official said. “He also shows little respect for classified information and might tweet about it— which would in counter to efforts to handle the issue out of the public eye.”

According to a source with direct knowledge, shortly after Trump was made aware of the New York Times story this weekend, he had two immediate reactions behind closed doors: He reflexively questioned the veracity of the reported intel simply because it was printed in the Times, which he frequently denounces as an adversary. And the prospect of more Americans dying as a result of these bounties once again caused him to emphasize his desire—and explicit campaign goal—to pull U.S. military personnel out of the country between now and November.

“Why are we still there?” Trump privately vented this weekend as he reacted to the Times reporting, according to this source.

It’s unclear how far the president will go in the remaining months of his first term to actually draw down the already reduced number of troops in Afghanistan, given the wild way his impulses and orders in foreign conflicts have oscillated between ramped-up violence andcalls for ending this costly Forever War.

“If President Trump wants to win, he’s going to have to excite his base,” said a source close to the White House who has advised the administration on foreign policy matters. “One way to do that is to actually start bringing troops home from Afghanistan and begin fulfilling his promises to end these awful endless wars. I know this is something he wants to do before Election Day, even if to just run on it.”

This individual added that, “The polling on this is overwhelming—it’s consistently 70-30 in favor of getting out, and cuts across party lines. But the core MAGA base in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania would be particularly excited by this.”

 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-officials-didn-t-want-084203652.html

 

GO RV, then BV

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Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, right, delivers remarks on the Coronavirus pandemic as President Donald Trump looks on in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 18, 2020. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Sipa USA/TNS)
JUNE 30, 2020 LAURA WIDENER
 
 

The Department of Defense is the latest in the Trump administration to denounce a New York Times report alleging that Russian military spies had placed bounties with the Taliban for the death of U.S. troops.

“The Department of Defense continues to evaluate intelligence that Russian GRU operatives were engaged in malign activity against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan.  To date, DOD has no corroborating evidence to validate the recent allegations found in open-source reports. Regardless, we always take the safety and security of our forces in Afghanistan – and around the world – most seriously and therefore continuously adopt measures to prevent harm from potential threats,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a late Monday night statement provided to American Military News.

 

The statement is the DOD’s first on the alleged intelligence.

 
 

The NYT report on Friday, citing “officials close to the matter,” said the Russian military intelligence unit had given the Taliban bounty money for successful attacks on coalition forces. At least some of the U.S. intelligence officials’ findings are based on information extracted from captured Afghan militants, the report said.

The Russian intelligence unit has been linked to previous assassination attempts, as well as destabilization efforts in Europe and revenge attacks. However, it is the first reported instance of Russian intelligence facilitating attacks on U.S. troops.

 
 

One attack on U.S. troops that is suspected to have involved Russian bounties took place in April 2019 and resulted in the death of three U.S. Marines, the NYT stated in a follow-up report, citing anonymous sources. The sources told NYT that President Donald Trump received a written briefing on the intelligence on or around February 27 this year.

Anonymous officials also told The Associated Press that Trump was briefed on the matter in March 2019 by then-national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump said on Monday he was never briefed on the alleged intelligence because it was not found to be credible.

In a tweet on Sunday night, Trump said, “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”

Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!! https://t.co/cowOmP7T1S

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2020

 

Then-Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell also said he never heard of the alleged Russian bounties.

“I never heard this. And it’s disgusting how you continue to politicize intelligence. You clearly don’t understand how raw intel gets verified. Leaks of partial information to reporters from anonymous sources is dangerous because people like you manipulate it for political gain,” Grenell shot back at California Rep. Ted Lieu, who accused Grenell of withholding the information.

I never heard this. And it’s disgusting how you continue to politicize intelligence. You clearly don’t understand how raw intel gets verified. Leaks of partial information to reporters from anonymous sources is dangerous because people like you manipulate it for political gain. https://t.co/403X9AVGAC

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) June 27, 2020

 

Trump retweeted Grenell’s reply and called on NYT to reveal its source for the report.

“The Fake News @ nytimes must reveal its “anonymous” source. Bet they can’t do it, this “person” probably does not even exist!” Trump said.

The Fake News @ nytimes must reveal its “anonymous” source. Bet they can’t do it, this “person” probably does not even exist! https://t.co/pdg4AjybOG

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020

 

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe also confirmed that Trump and Vice President Pence were never briefed on the information, and called the NYT report “inaccurate.”

“I have confirmed that neither the President nor the Vice President were ever briefed on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting yesterday,” Ratcliffe said. “The White House statement addressing this issue earlier today, which denied such a briefing occurred, was accurate. The New York Times reporting, and all other subsequent news reports about such an alleged briefing are inaccurate.”

“The White House statement addressing this issue earlier today, which denied such a briefing occurred, was accurate. The New York Times reporting, and all other subsequent news reports about such an alleged briefing are inaccurate.” (2/2)

— Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) June 28, 2020

 

In 2019, 20 Americans were killed in combat incidents in Afghanistan.

 
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Politics

Trump defense on Russian bounty story falls flat, even with Republicans

 
David Knowles
Editor Yahoo NewsJune 30, 2020
Scroll back up to restore default view.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany continued to defend President Trump on Tuesday in the wake of reporting by the New York Times and confirmation by other news outlets that intelligence officials had concluded in 2019 that Russia’s government offered bounties to Taliban fighters for killing American troops in Afghanistan.

One day after telling reporters that Trump had not been briefed on the alleged Russian bounties — contradicting reports that the intelligence was included in at least one President’s Daily Brief in 2019 — McEnany was asked why the president does not read those documents.

Numerous insider accounts of Trump’s time in the White House portray him as having a short attention span and demanding information be presented orally or graphically, rather than in written form.

“The president does read,” McEnany responded. “And he also consumes intelligence verbally. This president, I’ll tell you, is the most informed person on planet earth when it comes to the threats that we face.”

But the wave of outrage over the reports, in which at least a few Republicans joined, did not abate Tuesday.

After criticizing the Times for publishing its initial story on the bounties paid by Russia, McEnany also took aim at presumed leakers in the intelligence community. Asked if intelligence officials could be seeking to embarrass the president with leaks about the Russian program, McEnany replied, “It very possibly could be, and if that’s the case it’s despicable.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said Tuesday that the Russian bounty story was evidence of a concerning pattern.

“This president talks about cognitive capability. He doesn’t seem to be cognitively aware of what’s going on,” Biden said. “He either reads and/or gets briefed on important issues, and he forgets it, or he doesn’t think it’s necessary that he need to know it.”

The intelligence community finding that Vladimir Putin’s government paid Taliban fighters to kill Americans in Afghanistan was relayed to Trump in person more than a year ago, former national security adviser John Bolton said Monday.

“He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” said Bolton, whose memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” paints a damning picture of a disengaged, ignorant and impulsive Trump.

Trump has often spoken warmly of his personal relationship with the Russian president and has pursued policies that appear to align with Russian interests, including relocating some American troops from bases in Germany and seeking to have Russia readmitted to the G-7. Russia was expelled from the compact in 2014 as punishment for invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea.

At the same time, he has boasted of his “toughness” toward Moscow, and McEnany insisted that “no president has been as tough on Russia as this president.”

“This is as bad as it gets, and yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday in response to the story in the Times.

Some Republicans, including Trump allies, have also been critical of the administration in the wake of reporting about Russia’s actions and the lack of an administration response.

Locked in a tough reelection fight, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., suggested Tuesday that Russia should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.

While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that briefings given by the White House to members of the Senate Republicans were “appropriate,” he added that he did not “have an observation about what may have happened” regarding Trump’s knowledge of the bounties.

Asked if Russia should be allowed back in the G-7, McConnell replied, “Absolutely not.”

At least two PACs opposed to Trump, VoteVets and the Lincoln Project, released ads over the weekend attacking the administration on the issue. Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain, who clashed with Trump in the year before he died, also weighed in:

_____

 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-defense-on-russian-bounty-story-falls-flat-even-with-republicans-234205365.html

 

GO RV, then BV

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If you really want the truth source your question try searching through non US MSM  sources.....in this case India......the US media ,for the most part are agenda driven...........
 

Who REALLY funded the Taliban to kill Americans?

Sreeram Chaulia
Sreeram Chaulia

Sreeram Chaulia is a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonipat, India. His latest book is ‘Trumped: Emerging Powers in a Post-American World’

3 Jul, 2020 18:03
 

Who REALLY funded the Taliban to kill Americans?

2017 file photo, American soldiers wait on the tarmac in Logar province, Afghanistan © AP Photo/Rahmat Gul

 

While accusing Russia, without proof, of paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers, US politicians are conveniently ignoring facts about who really armed and financed terrorist groups in Afghanistan.

The allegation by some US intelligence agencies that Russia paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan has kicked up a partisan furore in Washington. It has renewed the tirade by the Democratic Party that President Donald Trump is soft on Russia and raised fresh demands for additional sanctions on Russia. 

 

With a US presidential election due shortly, reusing the ‘Russia’ card to paint Trump as incompetent on national security or as a commander-in-chief who treacherously colluded with Russia to spill the blood of American troops is a handy political attack tool.

 

For the liberal camp in the US, nothing quite stirs up hair-raising emotions and passions like Russia and its supposed evil actions around the world. Even though both Russia and the Taliban have denied any collaboration, Trump’s National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien clarified that the Russia-Taliban bounty theory was “uncorroborated,” and despite the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) information about Russia “incentivizing” the Taliban being met with skepticism from the National Security Agency (NSA), it is open season for the political knives to be brought out in Washington.

 

This imbroglio has everything to do with American domestic politics and little do with Russian foreign policy. American politicians accusing Trump of negligence or naivety towards Russia are conveniently ignoring facts about who really armed and financed the Taliban and several other terrorist and rogue actors in Afghanistan’s complex multi-sided, two-decade-long war which began with the US invasion in 2001.

READ MORE

Lee Camp: Connecting the dates – US media used to stop the ‘threat’ of peaceLee Camp: Connecting the dates – US media used to stop the ‘threat’ of peace

 

Forgot Pakistan?

For years, American strategic experts, intelligence agencies and military commanders have held a near unanimous and consistent view that sanctuary and sponsorship of the Taliban came from sections of Pakistan’s military establishment and its allied jihadist infrastructure across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

 

President George W. Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage spoke of “substantial information that there was direct assistance from the Pakistan government to the Taliban between 2002 and 2004,” the crucial period when the Taliban regrouped and re-emerged to fight a long anti-US insurgency.

 

In 2011, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Barack Obama, Admiral Mike Mullen, called the dreaded Haqqani terrorist network, which carried out several terrorist attacks on American forces and is almost inseparable from the Taliban, “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.”

 

And in 2018, the chief of staff of the US Army under President Trump, General Mark Milley, lamented it was “very difficult to eliminate” the insurgency in Afghanistan because “the Taliban, the Haqqanis and other organizations do, in fact, enjoy some safe haven in the border regions on the Pakistani side.”

Yet, in spite of the mountains of proof collected by the US national security institutions that Pakistan was the key foreign sustainer of the Taliban, Washington failed to break this nexus. The US, while fully knowing what was happening on the ground, cumulatively gave Pakistan $33 billion in aid between 2002 and 2018, until an exasperated President Trump switched off the money tap and slammed Pakistan for providing safe havens to “agents of chaos” that kill Americans in Afghanistan.

If you do a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation of the military and civilian aid that the US gave to Pakistan, which in turn was channeling funds to the Taliban and the Haqqani network, a straightforward conclusion emerges: multiple US administrations were indirectly financing violent attacks on US soldiers in Afghanistan. The Democrats crying hoarse about ‘Russia’ and the Taliban dare not go this deep in analyzing responsibility. 

READ MORE

Pelosi calls for new sanctions on Moscow, amid ‘Russian bounties’ allegationsPelosi calls for new sanctions on Moscow, amid ‘Russian bounties’ allegations

 

America’s war economy

But the truth is murkier than just Pakistan meddling in neighboring Afghanistan and the US’ kid-gloves treatment of the former. As part and parcel of the anti-Taliban counter-insurgency, American occupation forces in Afghanistan patronized a variety of local warlords, private militias, paramilitaries and ethnic entrepreneurs who were extremely brutal, abusive and lawless.

According to a forensic accountant cited in the Washington Post, out of $106 billion worth of US Defense Department contracts given out, “about 40 percent of the money ended up in the pockets of insurgents, criminal syndicates or corrupt Afghan officials.” To boot, the investigator specified that “18 percent of the contract money went to the Taliban, Haqqani, other insurgent groups.”

On one hand, there were American diplomats and military personnel attempting to shore up the fledgling Afghan state and ward off the jihadist threat of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but on the other hand was the war economy in Afghanistan and the mindboggling corruption wherein elements of the American state structure enabled warlords who kept the Afghan state weak and incapable of governing the whole country.

As the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) mildly rebuked in 2016, “the US government should limit alliances with malign powerbrokers and aim to balance any short-term gains from such relationships against the risk that empowering these actors will lead to systemic corruption.”

In retrospect, the prolonged Afghan war which cost nearly 2,400 American soldiers’ lives and killed 1,100 more soldiers from multiple US coalition partner countries, is a fiasco whose major cause was misguided American policies and dangerous American alliances. Blaming Russia or Iran (another country frequently cited by Western intelligence as a covert sponsor of the Taliban) at the *** end of a disastrous American war does not hold water.

 

With Trump having already executed a peace deal with the Taliban and a post-American Afghanistan on the anvil, pretty much every regional stakeholder country has planned in advance and established contacts with the Taliban and other forces in Afghanistan to create buffers and safety nets for its own security.

But raking up unverified claims that Russia financed the Taliban to attack Americans is sheer hypocrisy and a diversion from the culpability of multiple US administrations, including the Democratic presidency of Barack Obama, for badly bungling the Afghan war and putting thousands of US troops’ lives on the line. If the critics and partisans crying foul about Russia self-introspect, they will realize that America was not so ‘liberal’ or noble after all in its longest war

 

 
 
 

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Edited by coorslite21
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On 6/29/2020 at 10:46 AM, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

DEAR GOD THESE LIBERALS ARE PATHETIC.  I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH UNBRIDLED HATRED FOR ANY HUMAN BEING  BEFORE IN MY LIFE. 

 

AND TO THINK SOME OF THEM ACTUALLY THINK THEY'RE CHRISTIANS. :facepalm1:

 

Right there with you LGD. Hard to support a group that is actively killing, beating, burning, and supporting Atifia /BLM.  Like I said earlier. I waiting for the green light to engage. I live about 5 miles from some of these crazies and with two grand kids - 5 months and 3 year old I am getting real tired of being on the Defense. 

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