90 Miles From Tyranny : Pentagon: ‘No Corroborating Evidence’ Russians Offered Bounties for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan

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Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Pentagon: ‘No Corroborating Evidence’ Russians Offered Bounties for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan



The Pentagon said in a statement late Tuesday evening that it had no corroborating evidence that Russian operatives offered bounties to the Taliban for American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.

“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,” said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Jonathan Hoffman.

“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,” Hoffman added.

The statement came in response to a New York Times report that claimed that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The Times cited anonymous officials “briefed on the matter.”

The report claimed that the U.S. “concluded months ago” that the Russian unit had offered the bounties for successful attacks last year and that Islamist militants, or criminal elements closely associated with them, collected some bounty money and that the finding was briefed to President Donald Trump.

The report claimed that the National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, and officials developed a “menu of potential options,” but the White House had not authorized any step.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president and the vice president were never briefed on the allegations, and that there was no...

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3 comments:

ruralcounsel said...

More agitprop from the NYT to stir up trouble for the current Administration. Ether seditious behavior from the sources, or willful negligence from the NYT publishing such unsubstantiated swill. The NYT and all other media should be required to furnish proof, or at least circumstantial evidence of such claims, or be held liable.

G.W. Long said...

Imagine the mental torture that this NYT Article has caused the families of theses soldiers.

mountain boy said...

What I find alarming is the continual media smears about Russia and the lack of any true references about China who is a much worse dedicated enemy. Think about that with this Covid 19 nonsense that over a 100,000 Americans have died and zero blame from media targeting China. We walloped the jesus out of Iraq and Afghanistan over 3000 deaths at the World Trade Towers, China causes 100,000 American deaths and they skate. We need to do a World War 2 style of production to get our medical and critical sourcing back to America, cut China completely off and gear up militarily for the belligerent Chines threats. The Chinese are the biggest threat to our future.