“The intelligence wasn’t proved to me. It was proved enough to stress me. It was not proved adequate that I might take it to a courtroom of regulation. Which is generally legitimate in battlefield intelligence,” Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of US Central Command, told a modest group of reporters when touring to the region, according to a transcript supplied by the Defense Office.
Russian intelligence officers for the GRU, a armed forces intelligence device, made available money to Taliban militants in Afghanistan as a reward if they killed US or British troops there, a European intelligence official informed CNN previous month.
The official was unclear as to the precise Russian inspiration, but reported the incentives had, in their evaluation, led to coalition casualties. The official did not specify the day of the casualties, their range or nationality, or whether or not these were fatalities or injuries.
McKenzie said Tuesday, “I’m extremely familiar with this materials, and I’m a theater commander and I’ve had an chance to look at it. I observed it quite worrisome.”
“I just did not locate that there was a causative link there. It fearful me, and we acquire extreme pressure defense measures all the time in Afghanistan,” McKenzie said, including that he was not confident that the Russian bounty program was specifically dependable for the fatalities of US staff.
“You see a ton of indicators. Many of them are troubling several of them you act on. But in this situation, there just wasn’t plenty of there. I despatched the intelligence fellas back to keep on to dig on it. And I imagine they’re continuing to dig ideal now,” he extra.
Trump tweeted past month that “there have not been many attacks” on US troops by Taliban fighters as his proof that the documented intelligence could be “phony.”
McKenzie cautioned Tuesday that the US “really should generally try to remember, the Russians are not our pals. They are not our good friends. And they are not our buddies in Afghanistan. And they do not would like us perfectly.”
“And we just need to have to keep in mind that at all moments when we examine that intelligence.”
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