New York Moments: New US memo highlights gaps in intelligence reports on Russian bounties

New York Times: New US memo highlights gaps in intelligence reports on Russian bounties

Citing three officials, the paper reported that the Nationwide Intelligence Council, led by Director of Countrywide Intelligence John Ratcliffe, wrote the two-and-a-50 percent web page memo, which was dated on Wednesday — just days soon after the Times very first noted last week on intelligence officials’ understanding of the bounties and the White House’s subsequent inaction.

The officers explained to the Situations that the timing and highlights of the memo, which is claimed to incorporate no new information, imply that it aimed to fortify the administration’s initiatives to defend remaining silent to the information. Multiple former countrywide security officials explained to the paper that the memo’s depiction instructed that it may well have been swayed by political intentions.

The memo states that the CIA and the Countrywide Counterterrorism Centre had evaluated with “medium self esteem” that a unit of the Russian armed forces intelligence company GRU available the bounties, two of the officers briefed on the memo’s contents explained to the paper.

But the Nationwide Protection Agency and other users of the intelligence local community established that they did not have suitable evidence to achieve that degree of certainty and therefore held considerably less self-assurance in the perseverance, the two officials explained to the paper. A third official familiar with the memo advised the Times that the CIA’s amount of assurance in the summary was higher than that of other organizations.

A spokeswoman for the DNI’s place of work declined to remark. CNN has also attained out to the CIA.

News of the memo follows denials from the White House that President Donald Trump was “individually briefed” on experiences that Russia supplied bounties to Taliban fighters to eliminate US troops in Afghanistan.
But the intelligence was integrated in a single of Trump’s daily briefings on intelligence matters someday in the spring, according to a US official with immediate understanding of the most up-to-date information and facts. And a source familiar with the problem advised CNN the White Property was provided with these kinds of intelligence in early 2019.
CNN also reported Wednesday that Trump’s resistance to intelligence warnings about Russia led his nationwide stability workforce, which include all those who shipped the President’s Every day Short, to temporary him orally significantly less frequently on Russia-associated threats to the US, according to various previous administration officers who briefed Trump, were being present for briefings and who ready documents for his intelligence briefings.

The Moments claimed Friday that the memo purportedly walks by means of the intelligence at the rear of the agencies’ conclusions. This included stories of meetings between Russian armed forces intelligence officers and leaders of criminal networks with ties to the Taliban, of a GRU account transferring money to the network and of captured reduced-degree network users confirming Russia’s use of bounties to spur these types of killings.

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The two officers who elaborated on the memo in increased detail, nonetheless, explained to the Moments that the memo emphasized the lack of proof as to what the GRU officials and network leaders explained accurately for the duration of the meetings — and as a result could not be selected that Russia explicitly prolonged bounties for American soldiers’ fatalities.

It also stressed that the NSA lacked surveillance footage of the captured members’ purported accounts of bounties or crystal clear proof that the transferred dollars was to spend for bounties, the officials told the Times.

The memo also states that the Protection Intelligence Company lacked proof directly linking the alleged bounty provides to the Kremlin, the officials instructed the paper.

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