US President Donald Trump said he was not briefed on US intelligence related to Russian activity in Afghanistan because it was not thought “credible” by the country’s intelligence agencies.
An explosive New York Times report, citing anonymous officials, said that the US president had been told about findings that reportedly showed Russia had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing US soldiers.
Trump on Sunday denied having been briefed on the matter, as the report renewed questions about his reluctance to confront Russia over behavior that, if accurate, would represent a serious national security challenge.
“Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP,” Trump tweeted late on Sunday, referring to US Vice President Mike Pence.
According to the Times report, US intelligence had concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit offered rewards to Taliban-linked militants to kill troops of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan.
The rewards were purportedly incentives to target US forces as Trump tries to withdraw US troops from the conflict-torn country — one of the militants’ key demands — and end the US’ longest war.
The newspaper said that Trump was briefed on the US intelligence findings in March, but has not decided how to respond.
Early on Sunday morning, Trump had criticized the report as “probably just another phony Times hit job, just like their failed Russia Hoax.”
“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,” he tweeted. “Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us... Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump Administration.”
New US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe issued a statement late on Saturday denying Trump or Pence had been briefed “on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting.”
He also vouched for Saturday’s White House statement, which denied that the US president had been briefed on the intelligence, but left open the possibility that it existed.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver