Surprise! The ‘Russian Bounty’ Story - Turned Out To Be Fake News

[rogue06]

Surprise! The ‘Russian Bounty’ Story Hyped Up By Corrupt Media To Hurt Trump Turned Out To Be Fake News

APRIL 15, 2021 By Jordan Davidson
New reports show that U.S. intelligence had “low to moderate” confidence in a story peddled by leftists and their corrupt corporate media cronies last year. The anonymously sourced story claimed Russia offered members of the Taliban bounties in exchange for killing American soldiers.

“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a senior administration official said on Thursday.

“U.S. intelligence community agencies have low to moderate confidence in this judgment in part because it relies on detainee reporting, and due to the challenging operating environment in Afghanistan, our conclusion is based on information and evidence of connections between criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government,” the official continued.

Last summer, corporate media outlets ranging from the Washington Post and the New York Times to CNN and MSNBC treated the claim from unnamed intelligence sources as gospel truth and used it to fuel their anti-Trump narratives ahead of the 2020 election. These are the same media outlets that peddled false narratives about the debunked Russia collusion hoax.

I brought that up a couple days back in the Afghanistan thread after seanD asked "if intelligence will accuse Biden of ignoring bounties being put on US troops by the Russians in order to stop [the withdrawing of troops]" although it could use its own thread given how so many here made such a fuss over it.

Well, surprise, surprise, surprise!

Source: U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops

t 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.

"The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier," a senior administration official said.

"This information puts a burden on the Russian government to explain its actions and take steps to address this disturbing pattern of behavior," the official said, indicating that Biden is unprepared to walk the story back fully.

Significantly, the Biden team announced a raft of sanctions on Thursday. But those sanctions, targeting Russia’s sovereign debt market, are prompted only by Russia’s interference in the 2020 election and its alleged role in the SolarWinds cyber espionage. (In contrast, Biden administration officials said that their assessment attributing the breach of technology company SolarWinds to hackers from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service was "high confidence.")

"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.

According to the officials on Thursday’s call, the reporting about the alleged "bounties" came from "detainee reporting" -- raising the specter that someone told their U.S.-aligned Afghan jailers what they thought was necessary to get out of a cage. Specifically, the official cited "information and evidence of connections to criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government" as sources for the intelligence community’s assessment.



Source

© Copyright Original Source

[*story continues at hyperlink above*]

[Cow Poke]

Surprise! The ‘Russian Bounty’ Story Hyped Up By Corrupt Media To Hurt Trump Turned Out To Be Fake News

APRIL 15, 2021 By Jordan Davidson
New reports show that U.S. intelligence had “low to moderate” confidence in a story peddled by leftists and their corrupt corporate media cronies last year. The anonymously sourced story claimed Russia offered members of the Taliban bounties in exchange for killing American soldiers.

“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a senior administration official said on Thursday.

“U.S. intelligence community agencies have low to moderate confidence in this judgment in part because it relies on detainee reporting, and due to the challenging operating environment in Afghanistan, our conclusion is based on information and evidence of connections between criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government,” the official continued.

Last summer, corporate media outlets ranging from the Washington Post and the New York Times to CNN and MSNBC treated the claim from unnamed intelligence sources as gospel truth and used it to fuel their anti-Trump narratives ahead of the 2020 election. These are the same media outlets that peddled false narratives about the debunked Russia collusion hoax.