US intelligence says Russian spy unit paid Taliban to attack US troops

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A Russian spy unit paid members of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement to conduct lethal attacks on U.S. troops in that country, according to a classified American intelligence assessment, people familiar with the report said.

The assessment of the role played by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, in fostering attacks on American soldiers, comes as President Trump is pushing the Pentagon to withdraw a significant portion of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and as U.S. diplomats try to forge a peace accord involving the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

The intelligence assessment regarding Russia’s actions in Afghanistan was delivered to the White House earlier this Spring, and until recently had been known only to a handful of officials, a person familiar with it said. It's contents were reported earlier Friday by the New York Times....

https://www.foxnews.com/us/russian-spy-unit-paid-taliban-to-attack-us-troops-us-intelligence-says

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This news should surprise nobody. The U.S. funded Islamist insurgents under Carter and Reagan against the Soviet forces there. Putin is a former KGB agent and is well-aware the humiliations the CIA inflicted on the Russians. I always knew the Russians would fund and arm the Taliban in Afghanistan as comeuppance for the 1980s.

Also, keep in mind that Afghanistan is in Central Asia, within Russia's "near abroad" sphere of influence. Russians are as comfortable with U.S. battalions being in Afghanistan as the U.S. elite would be if Russian Spesnaz were operating all across Latin America.

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Spies and Commandos Warned Months Ago of Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops

The recovery of large amounts of American cash at a Taliban outpost in Afghanistan helped tip off U.S. officials. It is believed that at least one U.S. troop death was the result of the bounties....

... Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019, another official has said...

... The details added to the picture of the classified intelligence assessment, which The New York Times reported Friday has been under discussion inside the Trump administration since at least March, and emerged as the White House confronted a growing chorus of criticism on Sunday over its apparent failure to authorize a response to Russia...

... Leading congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanded a response to Russia that, according to officials, the administration has yet to authorize.

The president “needs to immediately expose and handle this, and stop Russia’s shadow war,” Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on Twitter...

... Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, said in a Twitter post on Sunday: “If reporting about Russian bounties on U.S. 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?”...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/us/politics/russian-bounties-warnings-trump.html

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Specializes in Emergency.

Agree with ahwtl’s assessment. This is part of the ongoing proxy war with russia that has been going on since 1945. Unfortunately, trump’s response appears to be deafening silence.

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In fact, the response of the administration to this information had been so fractured and insincere that it adds to the intrigue and suspicion.

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Trump's not going to do anything. He already basically said so. He called it a hoax. Let that marinate.

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The President of the United States does deserve to know. He should read The President’s Daily Brief as did every president since 1947.

Rep. McCaul admits Trump 'did deserve, probably' to know about Russian bounty intelligence

Top GOP member of House Foreign Affairs panel says Moscow-Taliban connection 'has been more to defeat ISIS'

... McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee pointed out that Russians working in coordination with the Taliban to kill American troops would be a "significant" divergence from working together to defeat ISIS....

... "As I examine this whole thing, though, I think the president did deserve probably to know that this was out there only because [of] the timing of the peace deal with the Taliban itself that was going on literally two days after this presidential daily briefing came in," he remarked....

https://www.foxnews.com/media/mccaul-trump-deserved-know-russian-bounty-intelligence

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Gang of Eight gets Russia bounty briefing amid confusion over Trump's role

Intelligence community heads will brief congressional leadership and top intelligence committee members

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gang-of-bounty-briefing

Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd tells Sunday TODAY’s Willie Geist “there’s no good answer” to why President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were not briefed on alleged intelligence that a Russian spy group offered Taliban-linked fighters bounty to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. “It’s amazing to me to proactively admit that the president is kept in the dark of something this alarming,” he says.

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About time. I'm curious to know exactly how many conversations he's had with Putin and what the context was about. We need to know these things because something's not right.

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Benghazi probe offers a road map for Trump’s Russian bounty briefing

Lawmakers demanding to know whether President Donald Trump and his inner circle ignored intelligence about Russian bounties on U.S. troops have a clear precedent for getting answers: Benghazi.

The special Republican-led House committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on a U.S. mission in the conflict-torn Libyan city conducted an extensive — and possibly unprecedented — dive into President Barack Obama’s daily intelligence briefings. The panel obtained testimony from the CIA officers who analyzed the intel and even the briefer who regularly delivered Obama his daily reports...

... In the panel’s final report, it described its review of Obama’s daily briefings as “one of the few, if only, times in history outside scrutiny has ever been applied to the PDB process.”

Now, as lawmakers of both parties demand a similar level of detail from Trump, the GOP Benghazi report presents a road map of sorts. It’s also a potent talking point for Congress if the White House blocks oversight efforts...

“[T]his Congress should want to know who knew what, when. And the administration is claiming that the president didn’t know — but if he didn’t know, it’s a big deal,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said Monday.

The House select committee on Benghazi — which featured Republicans like Jim Jordan and Mike Pompeo, who have gone on to become some of Trump’s closest allies in Congress and his Cabinet — interviewed Obama’s briefer on April 29, 2016. The briefer, who wasn’t identified by name, was described as the “executive coordinator” of Obama’s daily brief and detailed her briefing practices for the committee...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/02/benghazi-russia-trump-afghanistan-348336

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