The Russian bounty story isn’t going away.
I say that in light of the criticism President Trump attracted this week on this issue. Trump was asked by Axios’s Jonathan Swan whether he raised with Vladimir Putin the possibility that Russia’s GRU intelligence service paid the Taliban bounties to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Trump said “no” because the two presidents wanted to “discuss other things, and frankly, [the bounty reports are] an issue that many people said was fake news.” The president said his main interest in that July 23 call with Putin was on reaching a new nuclear arms control agreement.
A nuclear arms agreement is worthy of pursuit as long as it entails rigorous inspection safeguards. Still, Trump is making a serious error of judgment on the bounty issue. Because it is not fake news and won’t be disappearing anytime soon.
As I reported on June 30, the U.S. intelligence community reporting on this issue is credible. The CIA has a number of high-value intelligence streams, at least one very closely guarded, which hasn’t been reported on yet, that make it confident that a GRU unit did indeed pay bounties to have American soldiers killed. That intelligence was delivered to Trump. Which begs the question, why is Trump so willing to write off this issue as “fake news.” As I also noted, the National Security Agency’s intelligence stream on the GRU did not undermine the CIA’s reporting. Instead, the NSA’s greater skepticism took root in its being unable to establish line-of-control evidence between the GRU field team in question, which was acting outside of the GRU’s Kabul station, and the Kremlin. However, I remain confident that further intelligence reporting has either led, or will lead, the NSA to view the bounty plot to be more credible.
That said, Trump did make an interesting observation when responding to Swan’s question on why he hadn’t challenged Putin on Russia’s broader and confirmed support for the Taliban outside of the bounty issue. Trump rejoined that the United States had “supplied weapons when [the Afghan rebels] were fighting Russia [during the 1979-1989 conflict].” While Trump received criticism for his observation, it speaks to part of the reason the Russians want to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. From the Russian intelligence service perspective, this is payback. The importance of punishing America for former victories over the Soviet Union, as in the 1980s conflict, is a major driver of the Russian security establishment and figures such as Putin’s top security adviser, Nikolai Patrushev (if not so much for Putin — who cares more about contemporary interests).
But as I say, this issue isn’t going away, and Trump should have addressed it with Putin. More will come out on the bounties. When that happens, Trump’s comments will not be judged as having aged well.
