The Taliban Russian bounty story unravels
On June 27, 2020, the New York Times ran a bombshell story: “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Soldiers”
In the subsequent uproar, Donald Trump’s denial was seen as just another example of him being a Russian intelligence asset. Trump called it “fake news.”
Meanwhile, the intelligence community was split. The NSA was never convinced of the truthfulness of the story and “strongly dissented” from the view of the CIA. By September, there still was no credible evidence that the Russians had paid anyone to kill U.S. soldiers.
Today, Joe Biden announced sanctions on Russia, in part, for offering bounties on dead U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. But there’s a problem with that.
Intelligence agencies usually designate a report as having “low confidence” because it’s little more than gossip. But the calls for charging Trump with treason never stopped.
It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.
But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.
Over Trump’s four years in office, it’s impossible to point to a single story that did the most political damage to the president. This was just another in a long line of unproven assertions by the media that we knew all along was in the tank for Joe Biden.
But the Times story — “fake news” — also had a real-world impact on policy.
“We have noted our conclusion of the review that we conducted on the bounties issue and we have conveyed through diplomatic, intelligence, and military channels strong, direct messages on this issue, but we are not specifically tying the actions we are taking today to that matter,” a senior administration official told reporters in reference to the bounty claims.
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The story never made any sense to me. The Taliban were trying to kill American forces. Why would Russia pay them to do something they were trying to do already? They have been doing it since 9-11,
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