Glenn Greenwald: Liz Cheney Lied About Her Role in Spreading the Discredited CIA "Russian Bounty" Story
As part of her ideological war to reclaim the GOP for neocons, the now-deposed House leader falsely denied her role in a tale designed to block withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In an interview on Tuesday with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she spread the discredited CIA "Russian bounty” story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous intelligence officials, was then continually invoked by pro-war Republicans and Democrats — led by Cheney — to justify their blocking of that troop withdrawal. The story was discredited when the U.S. intelligence community admitted last month that it had only “low to moderate confidence” that any of this even happened.
When Baier asked Cheney about her role in spreading this debunked CIA story, Cheney blatantly lied to him, claiming “if you go back and look at what I said — every single thing I said: I said if those stories are true, we need to know why the President and Vice President were not briefed on them.” After Baier pressed her on the fact that she vested this story with credibility, Cheney insisted a second time that she never endorsed the claim but merely spoke conditionally, always using the “if these reports are true” formulation. Watch Cheney deny her role in spreading that story.
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WNU Editor: She was not the only one. Many Democrats and many in the media helped to spread this story.
12 comments:
The left
The media
The Democrats
Like a disease
Web of lies
Entitlement
Marxism
Violence
Thuggery
Corruption
It's a disease
Another queen of weaslespeak. Coupled with a too often compliant press corps.
Didnt WNU also spread this story though....
If I remember correctly wnu reported on the claims made but was sceptical (as was I) and thought it's made up (as thought I).
Outcome: do not, I repeat, do not listen or consume MSM. They're so wrong so often they should come with a warning label .. they've caused wars, death, misery on a scale unimaginable to humans.
Yet, people like Fred, and apparently also Jac, listen to them and then propagate their web of lies and deceit that then kills and harms more people
The story might be true.
I might not blame Cheney or others giving it credence, if the CIA had moderate to high confidence in the story being true. But after Brennan, Comey, Wray, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Kevin Clinesmith, Sally Yates, James Baker, and one other FBI lawyer all lied, I have little faith in the FBI or CIA.
That is nine bad employees out of about 35,000. Take out the support staff, and new hires or bottom rung people and those eight look very significant.
FBI’s NY office boss James Hendricks accused of sexually harassing eight women
So make it ten (10). I found Hendrik's name looking for the name of the female FBI lawyer who quit.
If you believe there is some truth to the saying the fish rots from the head, then the FBI is fucked. Put a fork into it.
Bad FBI Heads
1) Mueller
2) Comey
3) Waray
The CIA is sort of secret, otherwise we would have a list of bad actors there too.
WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence officials said Russian operatives secretly offered cash payments to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition troops, including Americans, in Afghanistan, according to multiple news media reports.
The New York Times, which first reported the story Friday, said a unit of Russia's military intelligence agency – the GRU, known for orchestrating assassinations and destabilization efforts against Western democracies – was behind the bounties on U.S. troops.
Russia and the Taliban denied the reports, and President Donald Trump said he didn't know about the reported bounties.
Here is what we know:
The bounties
Interrogations of militants and criminals in Afghanistan were the basis for the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia offered money for successful attacks on coalition troops last year, according to the Times.
The Associated Press reported that suspicions about Russia deepened when members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team 6, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in early 2020.
Some U.S. officials have long accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of acting against American interests in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union conducted a bloody and costly war in the 1980s.
In March 2018, Gen. John Nicholson – who was then the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan but has since retired – told the BBC Russia supplied the Taliban with arms. Russia and the Taliban denied the allegation.
Did the bounties lead to attacks?
Unnamed intelligence officials told the AP they are investigating attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2019 to see whether there is any evidence connecting them to the Russian bounties. Incidents in which Afghan security forces killed coalition troops – known as "green on blue" attacks – are a particular focus of the inquiry.
An attack on a convoy in which three U.S. Marines were killed in April 2019 is being closely looked at, the AP reported.
The Washington Post reported that U.S. interrogations of captured militants indicated the bounties "resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members." Overall in 2019, 17 U.S. service members died in hostilities in Afghanistan, according to the Department of Defense.
Trump denies knowledge
The Times and AP reported that Trump was briefed on the intelligence assessment. According to the Times, the briefing took place in late March.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in a statement Saturday that he had "confirmed that neither the President nor the Vice President were ever briefed on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting."
On Twitter, Trump insisted he did not know about the reported bounty and attacked the Times for the report.
"Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an 'anonymous source' by the Fake News @nytimes," Trump said Sunday morning.
"Nobody's been tougher on Russia than the Trump administration," he said in another tweet.
Sunday night, Trump said he had "just" been told by intelligence officials that they did not find the assessment "credible" and had decided not to brief him or Vice President Mike Pence on the matter. He speculated that the Times published the report "to make Republicans look bad!!!"
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at a White House news briefing Monday that the intelligence was not shared with Trump because it had not been "verified."
"There is no consensus within the intelligence community on these allegations," McEnany said, adding there were "dissenting opinions" on the intelligence assessment.
The Times defended its reporting.
"We stand by our story, the details of which have not been denied by the President's own National Security agencies," spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that, according to U.S. intelligence officials, a Russian spy unit secretly offered bounties last year to Taliban-linked militants for the killing of U.S. coalition forces in Afghanistan, including American troops. Per the officials, President Trump was briefed on the intelligence and the U.S. developed a range of possible responses to the significant Russian escalation, including diplomatic efforts and new sanctions, but the White House has not authorized any of them. (The officials didn’t offer any explanation as to why.) On Sunday morning, following outcry over the lack of action to protect U.S. servicemembers, President Trump claimed he hadn’t been told about the Russian operation, and suggested the reported intelligence was “fake news.”
“Nobody briefed or told me, [Vice-President Mike Pence], or Chief of Staff [Mark Meadows] about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians,” Trump wrote on Twitter, “Everybody is denying it & and there have not been many attacks on us.”
But on Sunday, the New York Times reported that intelligence officers and special operations forces in Afghanistan informed superiors in January about the payoffs, and that their reports were briefed to “the highest levels of the White House.” One official stated that the information was included in the President’s Daily Brief, an intelligence rundown that Trump has been known for years to ignore. The National Security Council also discussed the intelligence during an interagency meeting at the White House in March, but the Trump administration did not brief U.S. allies about it until this week.
On Monday, the timeline became more damning: According to the Associated Press, former national security adviser John Bolton briefed Trump on the bounties in March 2019. According to intelligence officials who spoke with the Washington Post, the bounty program resulted in the deaths of an unknown number U.S. soldiers.
The president, of course, has notoriously dismissed the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community regarding Russia in the past. According to the Post, the alleged Russian operation “has generated an intense debate within the Trump administration about how best to respond to a troubling new tactic” in light of Trump’s ongoing stance toward the country. According to Trump, he has somehow not been allowed in that loop.
2:00 (X2) and 2:03,
Does very nice copy and paste, xer stays in the lines, xer is very good at finger painting and making snowflakes with scissors. All we can know about who xer is, is from their story selection and from past history. Without any knowledge of past history, we would have to assume xer is a Russian or Chinese troll. Same difference really. Day dreams about Putin all day long.
I have on good authority that xer colors between the lines as well. Very bright pupil xer is.
Anon 1:05 PM
I did not believe the story when it first broke out.
Russian animosity towards the Taliban goes back decades. There would be blowback in Russia if the Kremlin was paying anything to the Taliban.
The Taliban are fueling the heroin crisis in Russia today. Another sore point.
The Taliban do not need to be paid to kill Americans. they do it for free.
Money might help or induce the Taliban to increase their operational tempo. That the Russians and Taliban hate each other does not mean they absolutely would not work together.
In the US white and black supremacists work together in the drug trade. Supposedly the Aryan Brotherhood hates black people. The Aryan Brotherhood is also known as the Cocaine Brotherhood.
That said the CIA and FBI have shown they are highly politicized. There might be low to moderate confidence that Russia is supplying the Taliban with money. There is moderate to high confidence that the CIA will make shit up like Brennan has and continues to do.
“I’ve lost count already, trying to sum up the number of decisions made by both the Obama and the Trump Administrations. The Trump Administration, by the way, has already long surpassed Obama’s by the sheer amount of persons and legal entities covered by these decisions,”
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
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