DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Russia Offered Afghans Bounty to Kill U.S. Troops, Officials Say

Wow.

Wow. And trump was briefed on this and didn’t do anything? Trash!!!!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-offered-afghans-bounty-kill-142839178.html

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.

The United States concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.

Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.

The intelligence finding was briefed to President Donald Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.

An operation to incentivize the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban, and it would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on Western troops.

Any involvement with the Taliban that resulted in the deaths of American troops would also be a huge escalation of Russia’s so-called hybrid war against the United States, a strategy of destabilizing adversaries through a combination of such tactics as cyberattacks, the spread of fake news, and covert and deniable military operations.

The Kremlin had not been made aware of the accusations, said Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for President Vladimir Putin of Russia. “If someone makes them, we’ll respond,” Peskov said.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, denied that the insurgents have “any such relations with any intelligence agency” and called the report an attempt to defame them.

“These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless — our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources,” he said. “That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure and we don’t attack them.”

Spokespeople at the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA declined to comment.

The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.

While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.

At a summit in Helsinki in 2018, Trump strongly suggested that he believed Putin’s denial that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite broad agreement within the U.S. intelligence establishment that it did. Trump criticized a bill imposing sanctions on Russia when he signed it into law after Congress passed it by veto-proof majorities. And he has repeatedly made statements that undermined the NATO alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the delicate intelligence and internal deliberations. They said the intelligence has been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.

The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials did not describe the mechanics of the Russian operation, such as how targets were picked or how money changed hands. It is also not clear whether Russian operatives had deployed inside Afghanistan or met with their Taliban counterparts elsewhere.

The revelations came into focus inside the Trump administration at a delicate and distracted time. Although officials collected the intelligence earlier in the year, the interagency meeting at the White House took place as the coronavirus pandemic was becoming a crisis and parts of the country were shutting down.

Moreover, as Trump seeks reelection in November, he wants to strike a peace deal with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan War.

Both American and Afghan officials have previously accused Russia of providing small arms and other support to the Taliban that amounts to destabilizing activity, although Russian government officials have dismissed such claims as “idle gossip” and baseless.

“We share some interests with Russia in Afghanistan, and clearly they’re acting to undermine our interests as well,” Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., commander of American forces in Afghanistan at the time, said in a 2018 interview with the BBC.

Though coalition troops suffered a spate of combat casualties last summer and early fall, only a few have since been killed. Four Americans were killed in combat in early 2020, but the Taliban have not attacked U.S. positions since a February agreement.

American troops have also sharply reduced their movement outside of military bases because of the coronavirus, reducing their exposure to attack.

While officials were said to be confident about the intelligence that Russian operatives offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing Americans, they have greater uncertainty about how high in the Russian government the covert operation was authorized and what its aim may be.

Some officials have theorized that the Russians may be seeking revenge on NATO forces for a 2018 battle in Syria in which the U.S. military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries, as they advanced on an American outpost. Officials have also suggested that the Russians may have been trying to derail peace talks to keep the United States bogged down in Afghanistan. But the motivation remains murky.

The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the GRU. The unit is linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who had worked for British intelligence and then defected, and his daughter.

Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilize the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination. In addition to the 2018 poisoning, the unit was behind an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of an arms manufacturer in Bulgaria a year earlier.

American intelligence officials say the GRU was at the center of Moscow’s covert efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In the months before that election, American officials say, two GRU cyberunits, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into Democratic Party servers, and then used WikiLeaks to publish embarrassing internal communications.

In part because those efforts were aimed at helping tilt the election in Trump’s favor, Trump’s handling of issues related to Russia and Putin has come under particular scrutiny. The special counsel investigation found that the Trump campaign welcomed Russia’s intervention and expected to benefit from it, but found insufficient evidence to establish that his associates had engaged in any criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

Operations involving Unit 29155 tend to be much more violent than those involving the cyberunits. Its officers are often decorated military veterans with years of service, in some cases dating to the Soviet Union’s failed war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Never before has the unit been accused of orchestrating attacks on Western soldiers, but officials briefed on its operations say it has been active in Afghanistan for many years.

Though Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003, relations between them have been warming in recent years. Taliban officials have traveled to Moscow for peace talks with other prominent Afghans, including the former president, Hamid Karzai. The talks have excluded representatives from the current Afghan government as well as anyone from the United States and at times have seemed to work at crosscurrents with U.S. efforts to bring an end to the conflict.

The disclosure comes at a time when Trump has said he would invite Putin to an expanded meeting of the Group of Seven nations, but tensions between U.S. and Russian militaries are running high.

In several recent episodes, in international territory and airspace from off the coast of Alaska to the Black and Mediterranean seas, combat planes from each country has scrambled to intercept military aircraft from the other.

And their punishment for that? Trump has been trying to get them back into the G7.

Pit and Milk, this is so freaking garbage.

this dude was briefed on all of this and STILL fought like crazy to get Russia back into the mix.

our president is such a freaking embarrassment. i dont even have to hold my nose for Biden anymore. its an easy decision.

Man, as soon as I think he can’t get any dumber, he proves me wrong.

Wow,what a shock.
No it isn't.The US did the same damn thing when Russia was stuck in that crap hole for 10 years.
We even supplied them Stingers to shot down their helos.That was a damn fine weapons system.Especially on helos.

Well, he wrapped a chain around his forearm and stood up to Corn Pop. We're so screwed.

jc...

Russian intelligence officers offered cash rewards to Taliban fighters to kill US, UK troops in Afghanistan, source says
(CNN)Russian intelligence officers for the military intelligence GRU recently offered money to Taliban militants in Afghanistan as rewards if they killed US or UK troops there, a European intelligence official told CNN.

By Nick Paton Walsh, Veronica Stracqualursi and Radina Gigova, CNN

Updated 6:22 PM ET, Sat June 27, 2020
link



The official was unclear as to the precise Russian motivation, but said the incentives had, in their assessment, led to coalition casualties. The official did not specify as to the date of the casualties, their number or nationality, or whether these were fatalities or injuries.

"This callous approach by the GRU is startling and reprehensible. Their motivation is bewildering," the official said.

This story was first reported by the New York Times.
US intelligence concluded months ago that Russian military intelligence offered the bounties, amid peace talks, the New York Times reported Friday.


Citing officials briefed on the matter, the Times reported that President Donald Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings and that the White House's National Security Council held a meeting about it in late March.


White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement Saturday that the President and Vice President Mike Pence were not briefed "on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence."


McEnany said her statement "does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story," which said Trump had been briefed.


McEnany did not deny the validity of the reported US intelligence that a Russian intelligence unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to carry out attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.


CNN has reached out to the Defense Department, the State Department, and the CIA, and has received no comment.


According to the Times, the Trump administration held expanded briefings about the intelligence assessment this week and shared information about it with the British government, whose forces were also believed to have been targeted.


The newspaper reported that officials thought of possible responses, including beginning with a diplomatic complaint to Moscow, a demand to cease, and sanctions -- but the White House has yet to authorize any action.


The Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, on Friday denounced the Times report as "baseless allegations" that have led to death threats against Russian diplomats in Washington and London.
"In the absence of reasons to #BlameRussians," the Times is inventing "new fake stories," the embassy wrote on Twitter.
The Taliban also rejected the Times report that they were offered bounties from Russia to target US troops in Afghanistan.


"We strongly reject this allegation. The nineteen-year Jihad of the Islamic Emirate is not indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country and neither is the Islamic Emirate in need of anyone in specifying objectives," the militant group's spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement Saturday.


In its covert operation, the Russian spy unit within the intelligence agency GRU had offered rewards for successful attacks last year, and Islamist militants, or armed criminal associates, are thought to have collected bounty money, the Times reported.


The European official told CNN the Russian intelligence officers worked for the GRU unit known as 29155, which has been blamed by European intelligence officials previously for the attempted assassinations of Sergei Skripal, a former KGB agent who had once been recruited years earlier by British intelligence, and his daughter in 2018 in Salisbury, UK, and other prominent attacks in Europe.


The US concluded that the GRU was behind the interference in the 2016 US election and cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and top Democratic officials. The Russian military agency was also accused by the West of assassination attempts and poison attacks in Europe within recent years.
The Times reported that the motivations behind the operation are unclear and there's uncertainty of how far up in the Kremlin the operation was authorized.


The US intelligence assessment was said to be based in part from interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals, according to the newspaper.


Former Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday called Trump's presidency a "gift" to Putin, referring to the New York Times report at a town hall focused on Asian American Pacific Islander issues. "It's a betrayal of every single American family with a loved one serving in Afghanistan or anywhere overseas. I'm quite frankly outraged by the report, and if I'm elected president, make no mistake about it, Vladimir Putin will be confronted."


New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, on Saturday called for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to put legislation sanctioning Russia for a vote on the chamber floor.


Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking Republican on House Foreign Affairs, said in a statement Saturday that he "immediately reached out to the Administration," adding that if the accusations in the New York Times report are true, the administration "must take swift and serious action to hold the Putin regime accountable."


Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, an Air Force veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, tweeted that "Russia is not a partner, and not to be negotiated with" and that Trump "needs to immediately expose and handle this, and stop Russia's shadow war."


Trump has sought to improve relations between Washington and Moscow and shares an unusually warm relationship with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.


But Trump and his administration point to US sanctions on Russia, arguing that he's been tougher on the country than previous presidents.


During a 2018 press conference alongside Putin in Helsinki, Finland, Trump, in a stunning move for an American president, refused to accept US intelligence that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election, instead appearing to align with Putin's denials.


Last month, Trump said he wished to invite Russia to the G7 summit, despite Russia's suspension in 2014 from the working group of leading industrial nations for its annexation of Crimea.


In February, the US and Taliban signed a historic agreement in Dohar, Qatar, setting in motion the possible full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and potential end to America's longest-fought war.


US troops are currently serving in Afghanistan as part of a US-led NATO mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces and focus on counterterrorism operations targeting the local ISIS affiliate and al Qaeda.


The Trump administration is close to finalizing a decision to withdraw more than 4,000 troops from Afghanistan by the fall, according to two administration officials. The move would reduce the number of troops from 8,600 to 4,500 and would be the lowest number since the very earliest days of the war in Afghanistan.


This story has been updated with additional reaction, a statement from the White House press secretary and information from a European intelligence official.


CNN's Karen Smith, Sarah Mucha, Nicky Robertson and Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.

Speechless. There is no defending this. You can't claim to stand for the military and vets while allowing things like this to happen and then keeping it hush hush. I wouldn't expect him to start a war over this, but he should have damn well sanctioned Russia over it at a minimum.

trump does things like this all the time!

FAKE NEWS!

"The United States receives thousands of intelligence reports a day and they are subject to strict scrutiny. While the White House does not routinely comment on alleged intelligence or internal deliberations, the CIA Director, National Security Advisor, and the Chief of Staff can all confirm that neither the President nor the Vice President were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence," Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary, said in a statement. "This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter.”

Putin is playing tUSA like a fiddle

j/c...

I swear, it's the only explanation.

Is that a camera on top of a combine harvesting a wheat field?

Yes

Well, especially at night, that's exactly what it looks like. Even more so with the new lights on combines.

You probably know but I’ll tell you anyway just in case. Rocket is alluding to Trump getting a golden shower by a Russian prostitute. That came out of the fake Russian dossier.

j/c...

Yeah, Mark... I'm sure your colleague, Gloria Allred, is searching high and low for as many Bowe Bergdahl's as she can find. A little top dollar incentive from Soros and the funder of the Steele Dossier, Hillary Clinton, and another hoax is in the making, with plenty of willing paid witnesses on tap.

Are you just naming people you don't like?

This post reads like a Glenn Beck conspiracy theory board....

Most of the posts from conservatives here do.

Steve Schmidt

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1276921172685238273.html



The CAO’s ( Casualty Assistance Officer’s) will arrive at the doorstep of an American family. There are always two and they will be dressed immaculately in the dress uniform of their service branch. It is their solemn duty to deliver the news that an American soldier, sailor, airman or marine has been killed in action.

The body or the remaining parts will be packed in ice and placed in an aluminum casket. The casket will be draped in the flag of the United States of America. It will be carried aboard a military aircraft past service members
standing at attention and saluting their fallen comrade. That plane will land at Dover, Delaware and the family will be their to receive their loved one.

Their will be an honor guard that caries the casket to the waiting hearse past service members standing at attention and saluting. From the moment of death the body will have never been unaccompanied. There will be a military funeral. Taps will be played and three volleys

Of rifle fire will crack the air. The flag will be folded and then presented to a young widow or widower on behalf of a grateful nation. The Russians will pay the bounty for the dead American to an Afghan warlord. The President of the United States knows this but he chooses

To do worse than nothing. He rewards the Russians. He fights for their interests. He fights to have them rejoin the G-7. He delights them by withdrawing American forces from Germany. He puts his illiberal cronies in charge of VOA. He doesn’t care about the dead American
Soldier.

Trump went West Point and saw the young officers who will soon be targeted for death by Russian money. The cowardly Republican Senators will say nothing. They are too afraid to be tweeted at by Trump.

The whole rancid lot apologists, collaborators and silent weaklings needs to be repudiated by the righteous rage of the American people in November. @ProjectLincoln

No we didn’t do the same damn thing. Get a clue. Suppling weapons is not exactly the same as paying out bounty money on Russian heads. Talk about acting deranged. You can’t possibly support this crap? And trump swept it under the flipping carpet. How disgusting.

Ye of little faith. Just watch em. Trump and his supporters are already deflecting and blaming Hillary, Biden, and Obama.

From the comment section in NYT;
Says it well

LT - Chicago
BAD: A Russian spy unit secretly offered bounties to militants in Afghanistan for killing American troops, U.S. intelligence officials found.

SO MUCH WORSE: The Trump administration has been deliberating for months about what, if anything, to do about the intelligence assessment.

Trump is quick to demand States "Dominate" the streets when the streets are filled with Black American protesters, he is quick to tear gas Americans legally and peacefully protesting outside the White House so he can beclown himself in a photo-op.

But he can't make a decision, can't even rouse himself to tweet out a warning when Putin has his spy's pay militants to kill Americans? Was his push-back removing U.S. troops from Germany? Further undermining NATO?

Trump has not "adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow". He is not standing at all. He is completely supine, unable or unwilling or too compromised to protect American interests against authoritarian regimes.

There is no bottom to this Presidency. No end to the treachery.

Read somewhere this morning, The Trump Admin is denying he was briefed.

Of course.

If that’s really true which I doubt, it makes it even worse for trump. Poor trump and his supporters are going to have to find a substantial spin on this one.

Trump is claiming that nobody briefed him on this situation.

which then begs the question: who's in charge?

lets not forget, its already been more than verified that he barely pays attention to intelligence briefings to begin with, and doesnt bother to read the intel reports either.

so who is in charge? Jared Kushner? trump is either incompetent or ignorant, and both is destructive to our country.

Hey he didnt know and he takes no responsibility. It's all good

First of all,I don't concern myself with Trump and his buffoonery.
secondly,the CIA were running dark ops out of Afganistan for the duration of the Russian occupation.What,exactly,there were doing who knows.But I would venture a guess and say paying bounty money would be rather tame.
For reference,one needs to look at Desert Strom,with the Iraqi faces on playing cards,wanted dead or alive posters with reward money offered for capture or death.That's kinda the same thing.
i'll not waste time with you.Your hatred of TRump has relieved you of all your sensibilities.

You mean that dossier that many things contained it were proven to be true?

Well didn't you know that targeting top officials in a terrorist organization that attacked our nation is the same thing as putting a bounty on any and every America troop on the battle field?

And I don't think they did us favors in response. Like Trump is doing Russia trying the get them back into the G7 which will give them more say on the world stage. I mean rewarding them is certainly in order after this, right?

I'm sorry boys,I have taken the narrow view of just the bounty hunting and excluded the Trump part.
Silly me,I should have known that just the mentioning of his name would set all you boys into a tizzy.
I'll retire now.

So then advocating that Russia be admitted back into the G7 is an appropriate response to this? Just asking for a friend.

Sidestepping the issue by saying "Trump" is no response to the situation at hand whatsoever.

kompromat.
if it isn't the peepee tape, it's something just as skeevy.