Representative Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday that President Trump “probably deserved to know” about the intelligence that Russian officials had paid rewards to Taliban-linked militants in exchange for the death of US troops in Afghanistan. .
McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee noted that Russians working in coordination with the Taliban to kill US troops would be a “significant” divergence from working together to defeat ISIS.
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“These threats are coming in 2019 and after a raid, according to reports, after some Marines were killed and some were detained, this intelligence came out,” McCaul told host Trace Gallagher. “But another intelligence agency had a very strong dissenting opinion on the credibility of intelligence itself.
“So when you have some kind of fun or a different point of view within the [intelligence community] itself, the shortest really has discretion. In this case, a professional intelligence officer had the discretion [of] if he rises to the level of the president or not. “
McCaul added that if there is a “low degree of confidence,” it may not be actionable. That may be a possible reason for not informing President Trump.
President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan last year. (AP Photo / Susan Walsh, File)
“However, in examining all of this, I think the President probably deserved to know that this was there just because [of] “The timing of the peace agreement with the Taliban was taking place literally two days after the presentation of this presidential briefing,” he said.
Although the President and the White House have insisted that Trump never received any intelligence information about Russian rewards before The New York Times reported on the matter on June 26, a separate source within the military told Fox News on Monday that special operations forces raided a Taliban outpost this year and recovered approximately $ 500,000. Subsequent questioning by an Afghan fighter revealed that the money came from Russia.
However, the source added that the information could not be easily verified and that the incident was not included in briefings for top Pentagon leaders.
Reports from the Washington Post indicated that “the Russian rewards are believed to have resulted in the death of several members of the US service.” The Associated Press reported that authorities are investigating an April 2019 attack on a U.S. convoy that killed three Marines in Afghanistan.
“It is reported that there was a raid by the SEAL Six team on a house with 18 arrests and there were two of these detainees, [who] He had reportedly been talking about Russia, “McCaul told Gallagher.” And then, of course, they find a bag of cash with $ 500,000. That is very significant. “
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“And, if you are talking about this coming from Russia, Russia has been in Afghanistan since 1979,” he explained. “They have not done anything good, but even mischief. But mainly, their connection to the Taliban has been more to defeat ISIS, not to kill US troops.”
“This would be a significant departure that I think would ensure that the president knows about this,” McCaul concluded. But again, a race official decided that the degree of confidence was not high enough, I suppose. “
