DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY "B"
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama
That the story was obviously bullshit did not prevent Democrats in Congress, including 'Russiagate' swindler Adam Schiff, to bluster about it and to call for immediate briefings and new sanctions on Russia.
Within just one week the recent attempt to revive 'Russiagate' has failed. It was an embarrassing failure for the media who pushed it. Their 'journalists' fell for obvious nonsense. They let their sources abuse them for political purposes. On June 27 the New York Times and the Washington Post published stories which claimed that Trump was informed about alleged Russian bounty payments to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers and did nothing about it:
A Russian military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. and British troops, in a striking escalation of the Kremlin’s hostility toward the United States, American intelligence has found.
The Russian operation, first reported by the New York Times, has generated an intense debate within the Trump administration about how best to respond to a troubling new tactic by a nation that most U.S. officials regard as a potential foe but that President Trump has frequently embraced as a friend, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence matter.
The story ran on page A-1 of the paper version of the NYT.
We immediately called it out for the obvious nonsense that it was:
Now the intelligence services make another claim that fits right into the above ['Russiagate'] scheme.
Reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post were called up by unnamed 'officials' and told to write that Russia pays some Afghans to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. There is zero evidence that the claim is true. The Taliban spokesman denies it. The numbers of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan is minimal. The alleged sources of the claims are criminals the U.S. has taken as prisoners in Afghanistan.
All that nonsense is again used to press against Trump's wish for better relations with Russia. Imagine - Trump was told about these nonsensical claims and he did nothing about it!
Others likewise dumped on the shady reporting:
- In ‘Russian Bounty’ Story, Evidence-Free Claims From Nameless Spies Became Fact Overnight - Alan MacLeod/FAIR
- BOUNTYGATE: Scapegoating Systemic Military Failure in Afghanistan - Scott Ritter/Consortiumnews
- What Does The Russia Bounty Story Really Amount To? - Rivkin, Beebe/The Hill
But that the story was obviously bullshit did not prevent Democrats in Congress, including 'Russiagate' swindler Adam Schiff, to bluster about it and to call for immediate briefings and new sanctions on Russia.
Just a day after it was published the main accusation, that Trump was briefed on the 'intelligence' died. The Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Advisor and the CIA publicly rejected the claim. Then the rest of the story started to crumble. On June 2, just one week after it was launched, the story was declared dead:
A memo produced in recent days by the office of the nation’s top intelligence official acknowledged that the C.I.A. and top counterterrorism officials have assessed that Russia appears to have offered bounties to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan, but emphasized uncertainties and gaps in evidence, according to three officials.
...
The memo said that the C.I.A. and the National Counterterrorism Center had assessed with medium confidence — meaning credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of near certainty — that a unit of the Russian military intelligence service, known as the G.R.U., offered the bounties, according to two of the officials briefed on its contents.But other parts of the intelligence community — including the National Security Agency, which favors electronic surveillance intelligence — said they did not have information to support that conclusion at the same level, therefore expressing lower confidence in the conclusion, according to the two officials.
The NYT buried the above quoted dead corpse of the original story on page A-19.
Last week we also learned that Adam Schiff, who had blamed Trump for not reacting to the fake 'intelligence' and who used the story to call for more Russia sanctions, had been briefed on the very same 'intelligence' months ago:
Top committee staff for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, were briefed in February on intelligence about Russia offering the Taliban bounties in Afghanistan, but he took no action in response to the briefing, multiple intelligence sources familiar with the briefing told The Federalist.
...
The revelation raises serious questions that Schiff is once again politicizing, and perhaps even deliberately misrepresenting, key data for partisan gain.Asked by a reporter Tuesday if he had any knowledge of the Russia story prior to the New York Times report, Schiff said “I can’t comment on specifics.”
Schiff’s recent complaints that Trump took no action against Russia in response to rumors of Russian bounties are curious given that Schiff himself took no action after his top staff were briefed by intelligence officials. As chairman of the intelligence committee, Schiff had the authority to immediately brief the full committee and convene hearings on the matter. Schiff, however, did nothing.
As Schiff and his committee staff knew about the claims they may well have been the ones who pushed it to the reporters.
Consider that both papers, the NYT and the WaPo, attribute their knowledge to 'officials'. There is a code for anonymous sources in U.S. political reporting that is usual adhered to. Sources are described as 'White House officials', 'administration officials', 'Pentagon officials' or 'intelligence officials' when they are working for the government. Congressional sources are usually described as 'officials' without any additional attribute.
The original sources also made the false claim that Trump had been briefed on the 'intelligence'. Sources in the White House or the CIA would have likely known that this had not been the case. Sources from Congress had no way of knowing that.
That makes it quite likely that Schiff and/or members of his staff were the original sources of the fake story. Consider that it was Schiff who for two years had claimed again and again that there was 'direct evidence" that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russian government. That has turned out to have been a lie. It is certainly not beyond Schiff to sell a dubious 'intelligence' report, based on circumstantial [and probably "worked on"] evidence, as alarming news that required immediate action.
The purpose of this shabby round of 'Russiagate' nonsense was to hinder Trump's plans to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan before the election, to sabotage the cooperation between Russia and the U.S. on the negotiations with the Taliban and to blame Trump of another 'collusion' with the ever hated Russia.
But the short life of the false claims made certain that it failed to achieve this.
Posted by b on July 7, 2020 at 17:08 UTC | Permalink
What a bunch of clowns.
While Covid piles on the deaths, and cities getting trashed, the Government throwing trillions at billionaires all these idiots can talk about is Russia, China, Venezuela,Iran.
How can the pissed off American public put up with these assholes anymore?
Posted by: arby | Jul 7 2020 17:25 utc | 2
Yes. If you're a military-industrial contractor, or for that matter, one that is helping smuggle opium out of Afghanistan, you want the US to stay. Saying that Russians are paying the Taliban bounties might cause the US to reinforce its force level in Afghanistan.
I mean, yeah, it makes no sense - but then staying in Afghanistan for almost twenty years didn't make any sense anyway. So "any excuse will do" is the idea - and always has been. There was never a rational reason to invade Afghanistan in the first place. It was all about oil and heroin from the get-go.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jul 7 2020 17:35 utc | 4
Caliman @1: "...even if it was true that the Russkies and the Iranians (our go-to baddies in the area) WERE paying bounties to kill American soldiers, how the Hell is that an argument for staying longer? We're under attack so we must stay to get killed??"
Don't neglect American mass psychology. Americans never retreat. Advance to the rear, perhaps, but America's mighty military machine will never run away. If the narrative that American troops are being hunted for bounties takes root in the American public's warped imaginations, then the New York Langley Times and the Washington Bezos Post can attack Trump as a coward who runs away while the fight is still on. That's not an image Trump can tolerate so he would be forced to keep troops there and even do some air strikes.
In other words, the fake news about bounties was just one part of the operation to keep US troops in Afghanistan.
Posted by: William Gruff | Jul 7 2020 17:41 utc | 5
RHS #4
And there's a multi-trillion dollar pile of minerals including lithium waiting to be mined in Afghanistan, this story has been hawked for years now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
As for the blog subject, I have no words anymore.
Posted by: snow_watcher | Jul 7 2020 17:42 utc | 6
No doubt China is laughing its ass off at this latest attempt at RussiaGate 2.0. Both the Dems and Trump continue to do Beijing's bidding, whether it's witting or not.
1.5 billion people in the span of several decades have transformed into ravenous, rapacious, insatiable consumers on a finite planet's with already severely diminished resources and a climate out of equilibrium.
All of that plus COVFEFE-19, plus a potential Swine Flu pandemic on top of it and the Bubonic Plague, and the corporatist media is focusing on Russia paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers when allegedly that's what the Taliban is doing any way?
America taking umbrage with the Russian bounties, even if true, tells me that perhaps the Taliban isn't truly the enemy when you remove the veil, or certainly not anymore than al Qaeda is/was and Daesh. They're all American inventions and as such, America will tell them when and where to kill American soldiers, not uppity Russia.
Posted by: 450.org | Jul 7 2020 17:43 utc | 7
Never laugh at the manic imbecility of a nuclear-armed superpower ruled by utterly corrupt criminals.
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"b" is Moon of Alabama's founding (and chief) editor. This site's purpose is to discuss politics, economics, philosophy and blogger Billmon's Whiskey Bar writings. Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent, open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community. Bernhard )"b") started and still runs the site. Once in a while you will also find posts and art from regular commentators. You can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard at MoonofA@aol.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Great stuff as usual ... but this:
"The purpose of this shabby round of 'Russiagate' nonsense was to hinder Trump's plans to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan before the election ..."
is the part I don't understand from the MSM: so, even if it was true that the Russkies and the Iranians (our go-to baddies in the area) WERE paying bounties to kill American soldiers, how the Hell is that an argument for staying longer? We're under attack so we must stay to get killed??
It doesn't even make sense as an effort to tarnish the peace deal with the Taliban: how is making peace with them after 20 years of war a worse idea knowing they may be getting paid to kill our folks, as well as doing it for their own purposes? If anything, it makes it even more imperative to make peace!
Posted by: Caliman | Jul 7 2020 17:25 utc | 1