The Daily - A Russian Plot to Kill U.S. Soldiers

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

A New York Times investigation has revealed evidence of a secret Russian operation to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan — and of the failure of the Trump administration to act on that intelligence. As lawmakers from both parties react with fury, one of the journalists who first reported the story tells us what has come to light so far.Guest: Eric Schmitt, who covers terrorism and national security for The New York Times.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: The Times reported on Monday that President Trump was provided a written briefing on the intelligence about the suspected Russian plot in late February.“If it does come out as true, obviously the heartache would be terrible,” said the father of a Marine who died in a 2019 car bombing in Afghanistan, which is reportedly the focus of investigators’ work.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, a Times investigation has revealed evidence of a secret Russian operation to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan and the failure of the Trump administration to act on that evidence. I spoke with my colleague, Eric Schmidt, one of the reporters who broke the original story about what we know now. It's Wednesday, July 1st. It's Wednesday, July 1st. Eric, how is it that the U.S. first learned that Russia was up to something in Afghanistan?

So, Michael, about six months ago or so, U.S. commandos working with Afghan allies carried out a raid on a Taliban safe house. And they made a remarkable discovery. They found some $500,000 in American money inside this safe house. Now, to be sure, from time to time, when they do these kinds of raids, you find weapons and you find other kinds of things, even some money. But the military sources that we've talked to said they'd never seen such a large haul. I mean, what would these guys be doing with $500,000? How did they get it? And what was it going to be used for? So this set off a lot of questions. And as they conduct other raids, the commandos, CIA, other authorities in Afghanistan, they seize the cell phones of different fighters, Taliban fighters, and they start exploiting that to

see if there's any clues in the cell phones that might lead them back to the source of this money. But perhaps one of the most important things that happens is when they seize a couple of very important senior Taliban and Taliban-related figures. And of course, that's one of the first things they want to ask these operatives is, do you know anything about this money? And what do the Miltons say? They had a remarkable story to tell, that this was money that they had been paid, They had a remarkable story to tell, that this was money that they had been paid, that they'd been paid by a secretive Russian military intelligence unit for the express purpose of killing American, British, and other coalition forces in Afghanistan.

But these investigators, they were searching around for other proof, how to link all this together. Because, of course, how do you assess that these Taliban guys weren't telling lies or some kind of disinformation? And then investigators learned of something else that sealed the deal. It seemed to kind of be the glue that pieced all these disparate parts together and that was intercepts basically electronic intercepts of the financial transactions themselves from this russian military intelligence unit down to the afghans on the ground who were the intermediaries who were basically managing this program for them there, and then on to the killers themselves

before they were dispatched to target the American forces there. Essentially, it was an electronic paper trail, receipts, if you will, for services asked and services rendered. This became a very compelling argument that the military, CIA, and other authorities in Afghanistan started putting together. And a very serious conclusion, because from what you're describing, U.S. intelligence officials are not just putting together a theory that this money was offered to Taliban fighters to go after Americans, to basically kill them for hire, but that money had actually been paid out to them, suggesting that such killings had occurred. That's right. This wasn't just in theory, but there was the idea that they'd actually recovered some of the proceeds that the Russians had paid the Afghans to carry out this mission. So obviously

the next task was to figure out what deaths may have been actually the result of this campaign. And do we have an answer? So the military and the intelligence officers working with Afghan officials started looking back over different attacks to see which looked suspicious. And their attentions focused on one in particular, three Marines who were killed on a patrol just outside of Bagram Air Base.

They were patrolling on a normal day when a large car bomb basically blew up. And this is something that the military is still determining, just what the links were, if any, to this program of this attack. But it was suspicious. And it may have had the hallmarks of this program and some of the receipts tying back to it. And Eric, in the minds of these intelligence officials who are starting to piece this Russian bounty system together, why would Russia do this? I mean, why would they pay the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers? Well, Michael, I think you have to go back in the history of the U.S. and Russia and Afghanistan, essentially to the very end of the Cold War, where in the late 1980s,

the CIA secretly armed the Mujahideen resistance against the Soviet Union, which had invaded and occupied Afghanistan for nearly a decade. And the United States helped accelerate the departure of Soviet soldiers from Afghanistan. Fast forward to after 9-11 when it's the U.S. that invades Afghanistan. Russians want a stable government there. They don't like the al-Qaeda any more than the U.S. that invades Afghanistan. Russians want a stable government there. They don't like the al-Qaeda any more than the United States does. And so for some years, there's actually some cooperation between Moscow and Washington. Until a few years ago, when President Putin of Russia starts to become disillusioned

with the U.S. plan in Afghanistan, doesn't believe it's going to work, and begins behind the backs of the U.S. to support the Taliban, to provide weapons, arms to the Taliban, to inflict pain on the United States and maybe even accelerate the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, just as decades before the U.S. had done to the Soviet Union. So if you put that framework, where Russia is now looking for a way to replace the United States as the power inside of Afghanistan and humiliate the United States at the same time, this bounty program starts to make a little bit of sense. can put bounties on the heads of American soldiers and increase the number of casualties. Presumably that would also stir unrest back in the United States, already war-weary after two decades of conflict in Afghanistan. So the Russian theory is, why not just speed that departure along? We take the U.S. place and we humiliate Washington and President Trump in the

process. And I guess the reason why Russia would turn to a middleman, the Taliban, on this is because it would never want to attack U.S. soldiers on its own in Afghanistan, just the way the U.S. didn't want to ever attack Russian soldiers directly in the 1980s. That's right. You hire basically cutouts to do your dirty work, and it's very hard for the other side to prove that you're responsible. When it's murky like this, and you have Afghan intermediaries, criminals on the ground, and monies passing back and forth, Russians would have plausible deniability. So, oh, perhaps we were just supporting them for other aims.

There's no evidence that we were behind this. But Eric, even so, even with a middleman cut out, as you just called it, I have to imagine that this kind of an operation by Russia is very risky and represents a pretty significant escalation by Russia. Absolutely, Michael. Anytime you have a foreign power, much less one like Russia, targeting American service members, American troops on the ground, that is a very serious thing.

Right, because this is in its own way almost a kind of act of war. Absolutely. That's the way many people would see it. Just because Russia might be using intermediaries or henchmen to do this, they're the ones responsible. They're the ones setting these killings in motion if they've happened. They're the ones that are essentially bribing the killers to carry out the attacks. And that's something that's very, very serious.

And the Pentagon and the White House would have to address it. We'll be right back. So, Eric, in your reporting on this Russian bounty operation, what do you learn about how the White House, how the Pentagon decides to respond to the conclusion of the intelligence agencies that this operation exists. So this assessment that's been put together by the CIA and the military special operations forces in Afghanistan starts to make its way up the chain of command into Washington sometime in late January, early February, perhaps. And it's very closely held. This is some of the most sensitive intelligence in the American government, both because of the ramifications, if it's true, that Russia has put a bounty on American soldiers' heads, and the political sensitivity that anything to do with Russia has

with this administration and specifically this White House. And that assessment is serious enough that it makes its way into what's called the Presidential Daily Briefing. This is the compendium of top intelligence and news items that's put together every day for the president to read. President Trump is not known to read it very often, very much. He relies more on verbal briefings, oral briefings. But by February 27th, our sources tell us it was in that document.

About a month later, at the end of March, the National Security Council, the National Security Arm of the White House, holds its first meeting to discuss the intelligence assessment. Its representatives from the State Department, from the Pentagon, from the CIA, from around the government who can weigh in about the impact this might have. And most important, the options. How should the United States government respond to this? And the options that are discussed at this meeting in late March include everything from sending Moscow a stern letter, basically cease and desist or else,

all the way up to sanctions, economic sanctions on top of those already imposed on Moscow that have been proven effective in damaging their economy. We don't know if President Trump was briefed on any of these options, imposed on Moscow that have been proven effective in damaging their economy. We don't know if President Trump was briefed on any of these options, but we do know that his administration did not authorize any kind of action in response. Nothing has happened so far as a result of this assessment. So that's the way things stood for many weeks,

that this was very tightly held information at the most senior levels of the government until late last week. This is sort of stunning. Here's the lead. When the Times published a major investigation, it basically spelled out everything we've just been discussing. A New York Times report alleges Russia offered bounties to the Taliban in exchange for killing U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

And what was the immediate reaction to all that information? Look, I'm sick to my stomach over this. Well, the immediate reaction was one of stunned disbelief. Sick to my stomach as a member of Congress, a patriot, but also as someone who served in Afghanistan. This is as bad as it gets. Both by Democrats and Republicans in Congress. And yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, he said, quote, imperative Congress get to the bottom of recent media reports. Where is President Trump? His number one job is to protect American soldiers. There was outrage that if indeed this bounty program had existed, what was the United States government doing about it? How were they protecting their soldiers, first of all, in Afghanistan? And what steps were being taken to punish the Russians? He should have a plan. What are we doing? And above all, go after Putin. Because this is at a time when President Trump has continued to carry out conversations with President Putin. In fact, just a few weeks ago,

the problem is many of the things that we talk about are about Putin. He invited Russia to join the G8 conference in Washington. And I say, have him in the room, have him in the room. Much to the disbelief of European allies and even some of his own Republican supporters here in the United States. So we have a G7. He's not there. Half of the meeting is devoted to Russia. And if he was there, it'd be much easier to solve. So as this information breaks, it breaks against a backdrop of the president continuing to enjoy, in his view, very warm relations with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. And how does the White House explain this? I mean, not only not responding to this

Russian bounty program, but actually growing closer to Russia and to Vladimir Putin after our government had reached this conclusion. Hello, everyone. The White House's immediate response is... The CIA director, NSA, national security advisor, and the chief of staff can all confirm that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence. That President Trump was never briefed on this. He never had a briefing from the CIA director, from his national security advisor, from his director of national intelligence. And thus, how could he have made any decision on it? There is no consensus within the intelligence community on these allegations.

And in effect, there are dissenting opinions from some in the intelligence community with regards to the veracity of what's being reported. The White House press secretary is saying that the reason he wasn't briefed was because there was no consensus among the intelligence agencies on what to brief him about. We need to get to the bottom of these reports. I'm going to be briefed at the White House tomorrow. I'm asking that my entire committee be briefed by the intel agencies. Intel agencies and Democrats and Republicans both demand briefings from the president's top advisors on what the intelligence report says. Is this another situation where the president either was told and just rejects it and what the president knew and when he knew it or his people

are too scared to tell him because it contradicts this narrative of Vladimir Putin being his buddy. What his aides knew and when they knew it. And if the president really wasn't briefed, why wasn't he briefed? Right, because the thinking is that the president knowing and not acting is extremely problematic. But the president not knowing is problematic as well. Because what would it say about an administration if the president was somehow not told this information or did not digest it? That's right. There's no good answer for the White House in this. The president was told and he doesn't remember. He wasn't told because his aides feared what his reaction might be. Or he was told and just dismissed it because

he didn't believe the intelligence, because it involved negative reporting on Russia. You have to remember, this has happened before. You think back to the allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. And when asked about this at a news conference in Helsinki.

Would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you warn him to never do it again? President Trump turned to President Putin. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be. He said, I believe him over my intelligence agencies. This has a different feel to it, though. So often we've seen in the past about some of the president's utterances and judgments and tweets, which have kind of fallen into partisan camps and people can say what he really meant or not. This is something different.

This is about soldiers' lives in Afghanistan. This is about somebody's brother, somebody's husband, somebody's daughter who are on the front lines in Afghanistan. And Trump as the commander-in-chief doesn't care enough to take the brief, doesn't care enough to read the intelligence about this, or his aides don't think he will. Something as sacrosanct as the American soldier in harm's way in the battlefields of Afghanistan, the White House doesn't have its back, the president doesn't have their backs. That's something very, very troubling indeed, if true. Thank you, Eric. Thank you.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Dr. Fauci, based on what you're seeing now, how many COVID-19 deaths and infections should America expect before this is all over? I can't make an accurate prediction, but it is going to be very disturbing. I will guarantee you that because when you have an outbreak. During his latest appearance before Congress on Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned lawmakers that the number of new infections in the U.S. could more than double if current conditions persist. We can't just focus on those areas that are having the surge.

It puts the entire country at risk. We are now having 40-plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around. And so I am very concerned. His warning comes as a surge of infections in the South and West now extend to the Midwest, where six states are recording higher infection rates. Overall, U.S. infections have increased 80% over the past two weeks. And in a closely watched Senate primary in Kentucky, Amy McGrath, the moderate choice of the Democratic Party establishment, has narrowly defeated Charles Booker,

a liberal challenger who harnessed growing public anger over police brutality. McGrath will now face Republican Senator Mitch McConnell in the fall. In its final weeks, the Kentucky primary had become a referendum on the future of the Democratic Party, and whether the outcry over race and policing could influence the outcome of an election. Despite losing, Booker won nearly 43% of the vote. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.