see url:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/inside-the-cia-and-nsa-disagreement-over-russian-bounties-story
see url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
see full story...There is one wee problem with this story about Russians
paying bounties to kill Americans...and that is...when the Soviet Union
invaded Afghanistan, the USG along with other Western Democracies funded
the terrorists including Al Qaeda, calling them liberation
forces...So...what's the problem...is it so terrible, so unconscionable
a tactic to US minds...Or is the USG once again trying to take the moral
high ground by saying that it doesn't do such terrible things in the
world...Not that the story is true anyway...the usual deception and
misinformation at work...
Quote<<<
Did Russia's GRU military intelligence service pay the Taliban bounties
to kill American military personnel in Afghanistan? It's unclear. The
intelligence community has given neither former President Donald Trump
or President Joe Biden a high confidence assessment that such incidents
occurred. But that's not the end of the story.
For the CIA in particular, this is very much an open matter.
Primarily responsible for the collection of human intelligence, the CIA
has moderate confidence that a compartmentalized unit of the GRU did
indeed pay bounties for the explicit purpose of killing Americans. I'm
led to believe that the CIA's basis for this assessment has five key
foundations.
First, information gathered from detainee interviews and related U.S.
military operations in Afghanistan.
Second, detected financial flows between the GRU, its intermediaries,
and Taliban officers.
Third, highly sensitive and reliable reporting from agents (human
sources) inside and outside of the Taliban network (some of this
reporting is so sensitive that the CIA delayed sharing it with America's
closest foreign partners).
Fourth, assessment of the GRU's established covert actions in
Afghanistan. It has previously been established with high confidence,
for example, that the GRU has supported active combat Taliban elements
with funding, explicitly anti-U.S. tactical guidance, and weaponry.
Fifth, Vladimir Putin's particular ideological animus for the United
States and historic animus over 1980s U.S. actions against the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan. At least under its current chief, Igor Kostyukov,
the GRU is a near-perfect physical manifestation of this
anti-Americanism (in the coming days, I will report on another case of
the GRU's exceptionally aggressive anti-U.S. activity).
In contrast, both the National Security Agency and the Defense
Intelligence Agency, despite sharing the CIA's concerns over Russia's
intelligence activity in Afghanistan, lack the independent intelligence
reporting to corroborate the CIA's bounty assessment. The NSA is
particularly relevant as pertaining to the intelligence community
assessments previously given to Trump, and now, to Biden.
>>>End of Quote
