War

AL put the signal up earlier for some analysis on what is going on with the leaks regarding the Russians placing bounties on US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Here’s what I think is going on:

First, someone or several people who are significantly senior enough to have access to the information that is being leaked, meaning that they have access to the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) are leaking. And they’re leaking A LOT! Most likely because they either have had enough or because they’re worried something even worse is coming, likely because they are read onto that compartment or special access program, and these leaks are their version of the Bat-Signal. What they are doing is not without significant personal and professional risk. They have not gone through regular channels. They are not whistleblowers in the legal sense of the term. So they have no legal protections should they be caught. But they appear to have a strategy and they are following it. Every time the President, the White House Spokesperson, a Republican member of Congress, and/or one of the President’s senior national security appointees releases a new explanation or excuse or tries to spin the reporting, a new and more damaging leak is fed out to one of several reporters who cover national security.

This brings us to the response of the President, his senior appointees, Republican members of Congress, and his surrogates in the media, which is basically that everyone knows the President doesn’t read anything, so if it was really important someone would have told him. Senator Johnson tried his hand at this, but he’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the plastic chop stick drawer, so…

“Nobody felt it was verified enough to even raise it to the level of the president,” Johnson said, adding that despite reports suggesting that info about the bounties was included in Trump’s daily briefing book, senators were told Tuesday that Trump was not orally briefed on it.

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) June 30, 2020

This seems to be the playbook they are using now. I expect that they will eventually roll the search for whomever leaked to CNN about the President’s phone calls with foreign heads of state into their response.

I don’t think this is going to go away any time soon. What I don’t know is whether it will be overtaken by the next scandal and just become part of the background noise of the President and his administration.

Open thread!

What I Think Is Going On With the Leaks Regarding the Russians Placing Bounties On US & Coalition ForcesPost + Comments (151)

The administration has been all over the map today in their attempts to explain and explain away the unfolding and evolving reporting on how Russian military intelligence, the GRU, has been offering bounties to the Taliban and Taliban affiliated officials to entice them to kill US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. The White House Press Secretary kicked things off by asserting that the US Intelligence Community (IC) had differing opinions regarding this intelligence and because there was no consensus, it was not briefed to the President. The Press Secretary also stated that the President has still not been briefed on this matter!!!!

She made her statements shortly after it was reported that the US Congress would be given a briefing on this intelligence, reading them onto what the IC knows and is reporting. The briefing was done at the White House. This reporting was clarified about an hour later: the briefing would only be for Republicans. And while we now know that the Democrats in Congress will get a briefing on this tomorrow, doing it this way is a SERIOUS PROBLEM!!!! The reason we have a Gang of 8 – the Speaker and Minority Leader in the House, the Majority and Minority Leaders in the Senate, and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees in each chamber – is to ensure that everyone gets briefed on this stuff at the same time. This is also the reason we are supposed to have a bipartisan intelligence oversight process within both the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) where everyone gets briefed at the same time. And the reason that the Gang of 8 or the members of both parties on the intelligence committees get briefed at the same time is to prevent accusations that one side is being told something the other side isn’t. To avoid the politicization of intelligence. And to prevent one side from being told something the other side isn’t.

As I type this, Congressman Schiff, the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has just told Chris Hayes that the Republicans on his committee are boycotting the committee hearings. He indicated that despite these hearing being unclassified and on unclassified matters, the Republican members of the committee don’t believe the hearings are secure enough because they’re being done by video-teleconference or include video-teleconferencing, so they’re boycotting them. This is a problem in and of itself, but it also exacerbates the problem of the Democrats and the Republicans being briefed separately on this matter by the White House. Because there will be no way for the Democrats to be sure that what they are told tomorrow morning is the same thing that the Republicans were told this afternoon. Especially because the Republican members of Congress who were briefed this afternoon immediately took steps to frame what they were told so as to reset and reframe the reporting on this issue. Here’s the statement from Republican Congressmen McCaul and Kinzinger:

Not a terrible statement. Of concern is the fact that both the Director of National Intelligence and the White House Chief of Staff who were involved in the briefing were two of the most divisively partisan members of the Republican caucus in the House until they were tapped this spring to go to work for the administration in positions that neither are qualified for. Another Republican member of the House who was briefed, who, like Congressman Kinzinger, is a veteran, issued a far more detailed statement in a tweet thread. A statement that shows just how the intelligence is going to be framed and who is responsible for all of this:

I just left the White House where I was briefed by CoS @MarkMeadows and top intelligence officials. They discussed @nytimes' hit piece falsely accusing @realDonaldTrump of ignoring reports that Russia placed bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan.

A thread, 👇

— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) June 29, 2020

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Updating the Analysis On the Russian Bounties On US & Coalition Forces Reporting & the New Reporting On the President’s Calls With Foreign LeadersPost + Comments (249)

Since The New York Times broke the news that Russia’s GRU had been placing bounties on US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, bounties that were being pursued by the Taliban and Taliban aligned militias, the reporting has evolved. Within several hours The Washington Post had confirmed the reporting. This was followed by Fox News. Then CNN confirmed and expanded the reporting to include that our EU allies intelligence services had also confirmed the original reporting. The New York Times has now confirmed CNN’s expansion of their reporting. As has Sky News, also a Murdoch property like Fox News. NBC News has also confirmed the reporting. Finally, The NY Times is now reporting that US Special Operations Forces and military intelligence had reported this information up their chains of command as early as January this year.

The President and his administration are, of course, pushing back. The current Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, tweeted out a denial, based on a quick internal review of records, that the President and the Vice President had been briefed. What he did not deny or pushback on was the actual substance of the reporting. Specifically, that Russian military intelligence, the GRU, has been offering bounties for US and coalition forces in Afghanistan to the Taliban and Taliban aligned militias. The Press Secretary also issued a similar denial to DNI Ratcliffe’s. Former Acting DNI Grennell tweeted out a complete denial as a response to Congressman Lieu’s tweeting about this that covered the briefings and the intelligence assessment that the GRU had taken out bounties on US and coalition forces. Grennell was then dragged by Chief Warrant Officer (ret) Jim Wright for not knowing what he’s talking about, which is a fact as Grennell has no intelligence experience, but a lot of experience spilling sensitive and classified information when serving as the US ambassador to Germany. The President also got in on the denials, tweeting out his own denial that he’d been briefed, as well as the Vice President and his new Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, but not denying the reporting about the intelligence assessment. He then went on to assert no one has ever been tougher on Russia and attack The New York Times, VP Biden, and his son Hunter. It also doesn’t help that the President’s tweet came out after the Russian embassy’s that appears to mimic key phrases from the Russian’s twitter denial.

Here’s what I think is really going on. I have no doubt the intel is solid and the leak is accurate. It has been confirmed by too many different sources, including our allies, and reported in too many different competing news outlets. Including Fox and Sky, which given their ownership and editorial stance, are sympathetic to the President. The new DNI, John Ratcliffe who also has ABSOLUTELY NO EXPERIENCE WITH INTELLIGENCE, did not deny the underlying truth in the leak in his response – that the GRU had been offering and paying bounties to the Taliban and Taliban affiliated militia to kill US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. He just denied that the President had been briefed, which was also the official White House position and that includes the denial the President tweeted out. While former Acting DNI Grennell has now weighed in claiming that all of it is a lie in a tweet responding to Congressman Ted Lieu, frankly Grennell might not have been in the loop. All we know is that this was assessed and then briefed sometime up to the beginning of March. It may have been briefed before Grennell took over, though he was installed in February. The reason for that is that as soon as this got to the theater commander and the US ambassador in Afghanistan from the Special Operations Forces and military intelligence personnel in theater, it would have been sent back as a priority for the National Command Authority’s situational awareness. The President’s denial that his new Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows was not briefed means nothing, because Meadows didn’t become the White House Chief of Staff until March 31st and then didn’t really start on site until mid April because he had to self quarantine for two weeks. So he wouldn’t have even been around based on the timeline being reported.

What we’re seeing in these denials are semantic games around the words brief and briefing. The NY Times reporting indicates this intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief (PDB). We know, from previous reporting, that the President does not and will not read his PDB. And we know from previous reporting that his primary briefers tend to not tell him anything negative about Russia, or anything else that would upset him, because he immediately loses his temper and blows up the briefing. My take is that it was in the PDB, which covered the intelligence community’ butts, but that because the President doesn’t read that and because no one will risk a temper tantrum by briefing him on anything Russia does that is negative, that it was never formally briefed. As in told to him in a session on a calendar with a block of time marked briefing. I would expect, however, that someone did mention it to him some other way. As an aside, in a different setting, what have you. Which is why they are being so precise in denying he was briefed. Notice they’re not denying he was told or notified, just not briefed. It is important to remember that the President had at least a 1/2 dozen phone calls with Putin between March and June. And those are the formal ones we know about because they were official. It does not count him talking to Putin on his private cell phone from the residence at night or early in the morning before he bothers to actually go into the Oval Office.

Mark Zaid, who was of counsel for the whistleblower has publicly offered to represent any and all US intel or nat-sec personnel who have knowledge of this, can confirm it, and wish to formally blow the whistle. Specifically that he and his firm will take the case pro bono and ensure that all the proper forms, formats, and processes are taking to ensure that the whistleblower complies with the law and is protected. We’ll have to wait to see where that goes.

The Washington Post is now reporting that US and coalition forces were, in fact, killed in action in Afghanistan as a result of the bounties offered by the GRU. Given that no one in or around the President, with the exception of Grennell, has even attempted to deny the actual underlying facts of the reporting, this story is only going to get worse. If the principals knew about this because they all get the PDB  – any and/or all of the Director (or acting) of National Intelligence, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the Senior Directors for Afghanistan and for Russia on the National Security Staff who work for the National Security Advisor – and they should have and they never actually said anything to the President, then all of them are derelict in their duties and need to be removed from their positions. If it was in the Presidential Daily Brief and neither the President, nor the Vice President read it because they can’t be bothered to read them, then they are derelict in their duties and need to be removed from their positions. What we know now is not the end of this story. I expect more information will come out, it will continue to be damning, and the President and his surrogates will try to ignore the underlying reality while lashing out at those who are reporting it. All while we have US and allied coalition forces in contact with the enemy in Afghanistan. An enemy that is being monetarily incentivized to kill them by the GRU/Russian military intelligence. If this failure to do anything to make Russia stop what they’re doing, from the most basic issuance of a démarche telling Putin to stop, let alone anything resembling real pushback, is not a clear example of a high crime and misdemeanor, then nothing is

Open thread.

The Information About the Russian Bounties On US And Coalition Service Members EvolvesPost + Comments (209)