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://apnews.com/425e43fa0ffdd6e126c5171653ec47d1
***Associated
Press writers Zeke Miller and Deb Riechmann in Washington, Deepti Hajela in New
York and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.