Sunday, June 28, 2020
Biden Criticizes Trump Over Intelligence on Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops
The White House denied that President Trump was briefed on the classified assessment, even though his staff has been discussing the matter since March.Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. assailed President Trump on Saturday for failing to punish Russia for offering bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, while the White House denied that Mr. Trump had been briefed on the months-old classified intelligence assessment about Russia’s activities. Citing officials briefed on the matter, The New York Times reported on Friday that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly paid Taliban-linked militants to target coalition troops in Afghanistan, including Americans and that Mr. Trump had been briefed about it. The article also reported that the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, but no response had yet been authorized.
Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, portrayed that as shameful.
“Not only has he failed to sanction or impose any kind of consequences on Russia for this egregious violation of international law, Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Biden said in a virtual town hall event held by a voter group, Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote.
“His entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale,” Mr. Biden added. “It’s a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation, to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way.”
The officials briefed on the matter said the intelligence assessment was based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials said the assessment had been treated as a closely held secret but that the administration expanded briefings about it over the past week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.
But as criticism of the administration’s inaction swelled on Friday and Saturday, the White House claimed that Mr. Trump had never been told about the intelligence assessment.“While the White House does not routinely comment on alleged intelligence or internal deliberations, the C.I.A. director, national security adviser and the chief of staff can all confirm that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence,” the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said in a statement Saturday afternoon, about 25 hours after the article was posted on The Times’s website.About six hours later on Saturday night, the director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, issued a statement echoing the White House’s assertion that Mr. Trump had not been briefed on the intelligence finding.
But one American official had told The Times that the intelligence finding that the Russians had offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants and criminals had been briefed at the highest levels of the White House.
Another said it was included in the President’s Daily Brief, a written document which draws from spywork to make analytic predictions about longstanding adversaries, unfolding plots and emerging crises around the world. The briefing document is given to the president to read and they serve as the basis for oral briefings to him several times a week.
Asked on Saturday evening how the president could not have known about the report if it had been in his daily brief, a National Security Council spokesman did not immediately respond.
Ms. McEnany notably did not question the substance of the intelligence assessment, saying only that her statement “did not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence.” She also did not challenge the Times’s reporting that the National Security Council had convened an interagency meeting about what to do about the report in late March.
Ms. McEnany did not explain why such an important report would have been withheld from Mr. Trump. Nor did she indicate whether Mr. Trump was upset at his subordinates for purportedly withholding the information from him.
American officials reached on Saturday said it strained credulity to think that White House national-security officials would be discussing such an important matter for months and even brief British officials about it and never provide the information to Mr. Trump.
The Times article did not say whether Vice President Mike Pence had been briefed.
Ms. McEnany also said in her statement that “the United States receives thousands of intelligence reports a day and they are subject to strict scrutiny.” It was not clear why she portrayed the report as if it were a tip merely received by the government from an outside source, when it was instead an intelligence assessment developed by the American government itself, based on analyzing intelligence.
Mr. Trump is particularly difficult to brief on critical national security matters, according to a recent examination by The Times that drew on The president veers off on tangents and getting him back on topic is difficult, they said. He has a short attention span and is said to rarely, if ever, read intelligence reports, including the written President’s Daily Brief document prepared for him.
Mr. Trump is said to have chosen to sit for intelligence briefings two or three times a week, rather than every day. Those briefings are based on the daily brief documents.
Press officers with the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment on Friday before the article was posted online. The security council and Pentagon spokesmen also declined to comment when asked again after the article was published. Both Russia and the Taliban have denied the American intelligence assessment. On Saturday, Russia’s embassy in Washington posted a screenshot of the Times report to Twitter with “FAKE” superimposed over it in big red letters. The embassy also accused American intelligence officials without evidence of involvement in drug trafficking in Afghanistan, suggesting they were floating erroneous information to distract from that.
In a statement, a Taliban spokesman dismissed the intelligence assessment as rumors, meant to interfere in the peace process with the United States to end the long-running war there.
“We reassure our nation and the entire world that the Islamic Emirate is not a tool of anyone nor is it employed for foreign agendas,” the spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said. The pushback followed a fierce expression of outrage at the Trump administration’s inaction. Much of it, like the statement from Mr. Biden, came from Democrats. But a few Republicans took public notice as well.
Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who is an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump but sometimes tries to push him to more hawkish positions — such as opposing his plan to pull out of Syria — said on Twitter that he wanted the administration to take the intelligence assessment seriously and brief Congress on the matter.
“I expect the Trump Administration to take such allegations seriously and inform Congress immediately as to the reliability of these news reports,” Mr. Graham wrote.
The United States concluded months ago that the Russian intelligence unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.
In response to the intelligence assessment, senior administration aides developed an array of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other more aggressive possible responses, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations.
But the White House has yet to decide on taking any step, the officials said in recent days.
Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.
The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House’s delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.
Afghanistan has been the site of proxy battles between Washington and Moscow before. In the 1980s, while the Soviet Union was mired in its own bloody war in the country, it was the United States that covertly helped arm the mujahedeen to fight against the Red Army in one of the last major confrontations of the Cold War.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Russia was largely supportive of the American effort to destroy Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban government. Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003, but recently their relationship has been warming, with Taliban leaders traveling to Moscow for peace talks.
US: Spies and Commandos Warned Months Ago of Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops
By Eric Schmitt, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos
The recovery of large amounts of American cash at a Taliban outpost in Afghanistan helped tip off U.S. officials.
United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan alerted their superiors as early as January to a suspected Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The crucial information that led the spies and commandos to focus on the bounties included the recovery of a large amount of American cash from a raid on a Taliban outpost that prompted suspicions. Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019, another official has said.
Armed with this information, military and intelligence officials have been reviewing American and other coalition combat casualties since early last year to determine whether any were victims of the plot. Four Americans were killed in combat in early 2020, but the Taliban have not attacked American positions since a February agreement to end the long-running war in Afghanistan.
The details added to the picture of the classified intelligence assessment, which The New York Times reported Friday has been under discussion inside the Trump administration since at least March, and emerged as the White House confronted a growing chorus of criticism on Sunday over its apparent failure to authorize a response to Russia.
Mr. Trump defended himself by denying the Times report that he had been briefed on the intelligence, expanding on a similar White House rebuttal a day earlier. But leading congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanded a response to Russia that, according to officials, the administration has yet to authorize.
The president “needs to immediately expose and handle this, and stop Russia’s shadow war,” Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on Twitter. Appearing on the ABC program “This Week,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she had not been briefed on the intelligence assessment and had asked for an immediate report to Congress. She accused Mr. Trump of wanting “to ignore” any charges against Russia.
“Russia has never gotten over the humiliation they suffered in Afghanistan, and now they are taking it out on us, our troops,” she said of the Soviet Union’s bloody war there in the 1980s. “This is totally outrageous. You would think that the minute the president heard of it, he would want to know more instead of denying that he knew anything.”Spokespeople for the C.I.A., the director of national intelligence and the Pentagon declined to comment on the new findings. A National Security Council spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Though the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, claimed on Saturday that Mr. Trump had not been briefed about the intelligence report, one American official had told The Times that the report was briefed to the highest levels of the White House. Another said it was included in the President’s Daily Brief, a compendium of foreign policy and national security intelligence compiled for Mr. Trump to read.
Ms. McEnany did not challenge The Times’s reporting on the existence of the intelligence assessment, a National Security Council interagency meeting about it in late March and the White House’s inaction. Multiple other news organizations also subsequently reported on the assessment.
The officials briefed on the matter said that the assessment had been treated as a closely held secret but that the administration expanded briefings about it over the last week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces were among those said to have been targeted.
Republicans in Congress demanded more information from the Trump administration about what happened and how the White House planned to respond.
Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, said in a Twitter post on Sunday: “If reporting about Russian bounties on U.S. forces is true, the White House must explain:
1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the PDB?
2. Who did know and when?
3. What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?”
Multiple Republicans retweeted Ms. Cheney’s post. Representative Daniel Crenshaw, Republican of Texas and a former member of the Navy SEALs, amplified her message, tweeting, “We need answers.”
In a statement in response to questions, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said he had long warned about Russia’s work to undermine American interests in the Middle East and southwest Asia and noted that he wrote an amendment last year rebuking Mr. Trump’s withdrawal of forces from Syria and Afghanistan.
“The United States needs to prioritize defense resources, maintain a sufficient regional military presence and continue to impose serious consequences on those who threaten us and our allies — like our strikes in Syria and Afghanistan against ISIS, the Taliban and Russian mercenary forces that threatened our partners,” Mr. McConnell said.Aides for other top Republicans either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican; Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In addition to saying he was never “briefed or told” about the intelligence report — a formulation that went beyond the White House denial of any formal briefing — Mr. Trump also cast doubt on the assessment’s credibility, which statements from his subordinates had not.
Specifically, he described the intelligence report as being about “so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians”; the report described bounties paid to Taliban militants by Russian military intelligence officers, not direct attacks. Mr. Trump also suggested that the developments could be a “hoax” and questioned whether The Times’s sources — government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity — existed.
Mr. Trump then pivoted to attack former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who criticized the president on Saturday for failing to punish Russia for offering bounties to the Taliban, as well as Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, who is the target of unsubstantiated claims that he helped a Ukrainian energy firm curry favor with the Obama administration when his father was vice president. “Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump administration,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “With Corrupt Joe Biden & Obama, Russia had a field day, taking over important parts of Ukraine — Where’s Hunter?”
American officials said the Russian plot to pay bounties to Taliban fighters came into focus over the past several months after intelligence analysts and Special Operations forces put together key pieces of evidence.
One official said the seizure of a large amount of American cash at one Taliban site got “everybody’s attention” in Afghanistan. It was not clear when the money was recovered.
Two officials said the information about the bounty hunting was “well known” among the intelligence community in Afghanistan, including the C.I.A.’s chief of station and other top officials there, like the military commandos hunting the Taliban. The information was distributed in intelligence reports and highlighted in some of them.
The assessment was compiled and sent up the chain of command to senior military and intelligence officials, eventually landing at the highest levels of the White House. The Security Council meeting in March came at a delicate time, as the coronavirus pandemic was becoming a crisis and prompting shutdowns around the country.
A former American official said the intelligence analyst who briefs the president and the national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, working with his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, would have been involved in any decision to brief Mr. Trump on Russia’s activities. The director of the C.I.A., Gina Haspel, might have also weighed in, the former official said.
Ms. McEnany cited all three of those senior officials in her statement saying the president had not been briefed.
National security officials have tracked Russia’s relationship with the Taliban for years and determined that Moscow has provided financial and material support to senior and regional Taliban leaders.While Russia has at times cooperated with the United States and appeared interested in Afghan stability, it often seems to work at crosscurrents with its own national interest if the result is damage to American national interests, said a former senior Trump White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security assessments.
Revenge is also a factor in Russia’s support for the Taliban, the official said. Russia has been keen to even the scales after a bloody confrontation in 2018 in Syria, when a massive U.S. counterattack killed hundreds of Syrian forces along with Russian mercenaries nominally supported by the Kremlin.
“They are keeping a score sheet, and they want to punish us for that incident,” the official said.
Both Russia and the Taliban have denied the American intelligence assessment.
Ms. Pelosi said that if the president had not, in fact, been briefed, then the country should be concerned that his administration was afraid to share with him information regarding Russia.Ms. Pelosi said that the episode underscored Mr. Trump’s accommodating stance toward Russia and that with him, “all roads lead to Putin.”“This is as bad as it gets, and yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score, denies being briefed,” she said. “Whether he is or not, his administration knows, and some of our allies who work with us in Afghanistan have been briefed and accept this report.”John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, said on “This Week” that he was not aware of the intelligence assessment, but he questioned Mr. Trump’s response on Twitter.
“What would motivate the president to do that, because it looks bad if Russians are paying to kill Americans and we’re not doing anything about it?” Mr. Bolton said. “The presidential reaction is to say: ‘It’s not my responsibility. Nobody told me about it.’ And therefore to duck any complaints that he hasn’t acted effectively.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/us/politics/russian-bounties-warnings-trump.html?searchResultPosition=2
متحدہ اپوزیشن نے وفاقی حکومت کا مالی سال 21-2020 کا بجٹ مسترد کردیا
قومی اسمبلی میں اپوزیشن نے پاکستان تحریک انصاف کی حکومت کی جانب سے مالی سال 21-2020 بجٹ مسترد کردیا۔
اپوزیشن رہنماؤں کے ہمراہ پریس کانفرنس کرتے ہوئے چیئرمین پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی (پی پی پی) بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ پورا پاکستان بجٹ کے خلاف متحد ہوچکا ہے۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری کا یہ بھی کہنا تھا کہ پٹرولیم قیمتیں بڑھا کر عوام پر ظلم کیا گیا۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ مشترکہ اپوزیشن نےبجٹ مستردکرکےمشترکہ بیان جاری کیا ہے۔
ان کا کہنا تھا کہ مشکل صورتحال میں عوام پر ظلم کیا گیا، حکومت نے بجٹ منظوری سے پہلے پیٹرول پر جتنا ٹیکس لگایا وہ پیٹرول سے بھی مہنگا ہے۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ آئندہ ہفتے آل پارٹیز کانفرنس بلانے کا پلان ہے، پاکستان مسلم لیگ (ن) کے صدر شہباز شریف کے صحتیاب ہونے پر اے پی سی کا اعلان ہوگا۔
چیئرمین پی پی پی نے کہا کہ شہباز شریف بیماری کے باوجود تمام اپوزیشن جماعتوں سے رابطے میں ہیں۔
ان کا یہ بھی کہنا تھا کہ کورونا وبا پر تمام اپوزیشن نے ذمہ دارانہ کردار ادا کیا۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ عمران خان کا وزیرِ اعظم ہونا قوم کی صحت اور معاشی صورتحال کے لیے خطرہ ہے۔
عمران خان قومی بوجھ بن گئے، خواجہ آصف
پاکستان مسلم لیگ (ن) کے رہنما اور اپوزیشن لیڈر خواجہ آصف نے کہا کہ کورونا وبا معیشت کی بحالی کے دروازے بھی بند کر چکی ہے۔
انہوں نے کہا کہ حکومت کے انجام کا وقت آن پہنچا ہے، مشیرِ خزانہ کے بیان کے دو دن بعد عوام پر پیٹرول بم گرایا گیا۔
خواجہ آصف کا کہنا تھا کہ اپوزیشن جلد اس معاملے میں اپنا لائحہ عمل طے کرے گی۔
لیگی رہنما نے کہا کہ اس مشکل وقت میں ملک کے طول و عرض میں ایک وبا کا راج ہے، عوام کو ریلیف دینے کے بجائے عوام پر بوجھ ڈال دیا گیا۔
خواجہ آصف کا کہنا تھا کہ عمران خان کی حکمرانی ہمیں تباہی کی طرف لے جا رہی ہے، مہنگائی کا طوفان ناقابلِ برداشت ہے۔
اپوزیشن لیڈر نے کہا کہ عمران خان قومی بوجھ بن گئے ہیں، جتنی جلدی عمران خان سے چھٹکارا حاصل کیا جائے، بچا کھچا پاکستان بچایا جاسکتا ہے۔
خواجہ آصف کا کہنا تھا کہ اپوزیشن مشترکہ حکمت عملی مرتب کرے گی، اپوزیشن کو ٹارگٹ کرنے کے لیے حکومتی ادارے استعمال کیے جارہے ہیں۔
ان کا یہ بھی کہنا تھا کہ وقت آچکا ہے کہ ان کا حساب کتاب چکا دیا جائے۔
خواجہ آصف کا کہنا تھا کہ حکومت کی تبدیلی کے لیے ہر آئینی راستہ اختیار کریں گے، نیا مینڈیٹ ہی موجودہ مسائل سے نجات کا راستہ ہے۔
بجٹ محض الفاظ کا گورکھ دھندا ہے، میاں اسلم
جماعت اسلامی کے رہنما میاں اسلم کا کہنا تھا کہ حکومت نے پٹرولیم قیمتیں بڑھا کر عوام کی جیبوں پر ڈاکا ڈالا ہے۔
ان کا یہ بھی کہنا تھا کہ بجٹ محض الفاظ کا گورکھ دھندا ہے۔
میاں اسلام کا کہنا تھا کہ عمران خان حکومت نے بدترین بجٹ پیش کیا، حکومت پہلے بھی فیل تھی بجٹ کے بعد مزید فیل ہو گئی ہے۔
Budget United Whole Pakistan Against Government: Bilawal Bhutto
Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto has said that PTI budget has united the whole of Pakistan against the government.
Opposition parties have come up with a common strategy while rejecting the budget while we are taking the voice of the people to the National Assembly.
Before the budget was passed, more taxes were charged than petrol prices, while the present government has increased petrol prices and put more burden on the people.
Bilawal said that we wanted an (All Party Conference) APC before the budget. The opposition’s position on the economy has been put before the people and we will call an APC when Shahbaz Sharif will become healthy.
Earlier, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had said in the National Assembly that the budget presented by the federal government was not the budget of Pakistan but of another country
PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had said that the government’s priority even today is not to give money to the IMF, while looking at the budget, it seems that there is no threat to COVID-19.
The PPP chairman further said that the budget of the federal government is not farmer and labor friendly, the budget of the government is to deal with Coronavirus and not to deal with any challenge.
Telephonic contact between Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Asfandyar Wali
Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and President Awami National Party, Asfandyar Wali rejected the budget presented by the federal government.
Both leaders talking via telephone also expressed concerns over government’ inability to control the pandemic of Covid-19. Chairman Bilawal said that people have lost confidence with the PTI government as it has failed on every front. There is no any front where the government has not failed. The poor is being crushed with price hike and unemployment and Imran Khan is busy in attacking the constitution. Mafia was benefitted by Imran Khan due to sudden increase in the petroleum prices.
Both the leaders agreed on the All Parties’ Conference next week.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/2020/06/27/telephonic-contact-between-chairman-bilawal-bilawal-bhutto-zardari-and-asfandyar-wali/
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