The New York Times published a story on Friday that said the National Intelligence Council recently produced a memo regarding allegations of Russian GRU agents paying bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan. The memo was produced on July 1st and went over the confidence levels different intelligence agencies gave to the allegations against Russia.
According to two unnamed officials speaking to the Times, the memo says the CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) “assessed with medium confidence” that the GRU offered bounties to the Taliban. The memo also says, “other parts of the intelligence community,” the National Security Agency (NSA) being the only agency named, assessed the intelligence with lower confidence. Another anonymous official told the Times that the CIA’s confidence level was higher than the other agencies, but did not describe the precise confidence levels.
Intelligence agencies use confidence levels to reflect the scope and quality of the intelligence they are assessing. There are three levels of confidence, “high,” “moderate,” and “low.” According to a document from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a “moderate” confidence level — which is what the CIA and NCC gave to the bounty intel according to the Times — means “that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence.”
A “low” level of confidence — which the NSA and possibly other intelligence agencies gave to the bounty intel — means “that the information’s credibility and/or plausibility is questionable, or that the information is too fragmented or poorly corroborated to make solid analytic inferences, or that we have significant concerns or problems with the sources.” Even “high” confidence is not a “fact or a certainty” and still carries “a risk of being wrong,” according to the DNI.
The Times story corroborates a report from The Wall Street Journal that said the NSA “strongly dissented from other intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia paid bounties for the killing of US soldiers in Afghanistan.” An unnamed intelligence official said something similar in comments to CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge last week. The official said the NSA assessed that the intelligence report on the bounty intelligence “does not match well-established and verifiable Taliban and Haqqani practices” and lacks “sufficient reporting to corroborate any links.”
The NSA has dissented from other agencies in the past over allegations against Moscow. A January 2017 intelligence assessment that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of President Trump was given a “high” level of confidence by the CIA and the FBI, while the NSA gave it a “moderate” level of confidence.
“Moderate Confidence” means its a Rumor.
One media corroborates another media,and talk of confidence levels, sort of like British “high probability” or “most likely”, etc.
But still talking.
And will be talking.
And more talking.
And will be talking well into election, by whick time Jeff Bezoz nanaged analysts in CIA will find more CONFIDENCE. Con artistry at urs finest.
If there wasn’t an enemy how could they justify a trillion dollars a year for “defense” while millions of Americans go without healthcare and eat from food banks.
How can this be happening? Is it because most people believe that there is a creature called State, and it OWNS all the money it spends?
As if we have nothing to do with it. The idea that it is really all our money or money borrowed in our name — is not present. Otherwise, there will be some real demands for spending it differently.
Why would the Taliban have to be paid to kill US soldiers, when killing US invaders was their main goal?
You are now being logical — that is not how the “intelligence” operates.
“assessed with medium confidence”
There should be no such thing. Say it’s a fact or don’t talk about it. They’re aren’t reporting the weather.
“Assessed with medium confidence” = a lie in disguise.
Kind of like those WMDs.
That was a rare instance of a lie debunked and truth becoming the new narrative.
The NYT did a major walk back of its first three articles on this bogus #RussiaGate story when on July 3rd (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/us/politics/memo-russian-bounties.html) the NYT acknowledged that:
1. “The two officials who discussed the memo [from WH] in greater detail said, it stressed that the government lacks direct evidence of what the criminal network leaders and G.R.U. officials said at face-to-face meetings so it cannot say with any greater certainty that Russia specifically offered bounties in return for killings of Western soldiers.”
2. “The memo also emphasized that the National Security Agency did not surveillance that confirmed what the captured detainees told interrogators about bounties, according to the officials. The agency did intercept data of financial transfers that provide circumstantial support for the detainees’ account, but the agency does not have explicit evidence that the money was bounty payments.”
3. “The memo also said that the Defense Intelligence Agency [Pentagon’s inhouse spooks[ did not have information directly connecting the suspected operation to the Kremlin, officials said.”
(I made all these points in my antiwar.com article that was published July 2nd since I knew the first 3 NYT articles were BS.)
Despite this major discrediting by the NYT of its own bogus story, Susan Rice goes on NBC on Sunday and says this story is true and Trump is letting Russia kill US soldiers in Afghanistan w/o any consequences. Unbelievable!
Susan Rice knows that most americans settle with the corporate lie and are to lazy to research on their own.
Susan Rice is a CFR member globalist.
A sellout. A NWO puppet and stooge.
… Walkbacks are not uncommon and rarely undo the damage of the first go-round unless the walkback itself becomes the bigger story.
Newspaper articles aren’t like science papers; they don;t get retracted and forever removed from legit citation.
Walking back gives the NYT the appearance of responsible journalism without the substance.
[Edit: Link goes to ‘page not found…]
The NSA always dissents on America’s more absurd Russiagate ballyhoo. That’s because they actually have all the phone calls and emails of all the powerful people involved. They’re the only intelligence organization who doesn’t have to rely on torture and dopelords for information. This full spectrum Big Brother style surveillance is what makes them more dangerous than the CIA. It’s also what makes them more reliable than the CIA, at least when caught candidly in memos.
This was just an excuse to prevent Trump from bringing the troops home from Afghanistan. And it worked. And of course the military-industrial complex always needs there to be an enemy so the money will keep rolling in.
Yes, it makes no sense at alll.
sorry, that reply should have been to AmericanMuse.
If a democrat was in office, the republicans would be screaming from the rooftops about this, but since it’s Their Great Leader, they just say ‘nothing to see here’…..it’s truly disgusting
Why is this story still being mentioned? “Intelligence” is an overused and inaccurate word for these reports!!!
The NSA must be seriously concerned to risk taking on the CIA and politicos over this.
Deep Statism would tend towards absolutism in the end-stage, precluding even mild disagreement, but fortunately we don’t seem to be there yet…
The story is not headline MSM stuff anymore, though. Perhaps they feel the damage is done and are moving on to the next ‘Resistance’ strike.
I am trying to decide which party is more stupid here, the nyt authors, the hysterical presstitutes, the so called experts, e.g. susan rice, or anyone who believes this garbage or gives it more than a couple of seconds of reflection.
This may be news to the parties listed above but the taliban have been killing us troops for um, say, a couple of decades and they do not or did need any “stinking” bounty to continue to do so.
Iraqi war. US women soldiers (seven I believe) were killed by Iraqi insurgents in a resupply convoy to the frontline troops. It’s believed by many in US intelligence that it was, among other US agencies, IDF special ops acting in a psy-op to further garner the support of the American people. Russians? I don’t think so. This looks more like another homegrown operation. Time will, as usual, reveal the truth – but it rarely comes from our sold-out media. And you can take that to the bank!