SEEDS OF DOUBT

Trump Administration Issues New Memo Casting Doubt on Intelligence About Russian Bounties

Officials say the memo may have been intended to justify the Trump administration's inaction on the matter.

A new two-and-a-half page memo produced by the National Intelligence Council plays up uncertainties in the assessment by the CIA and counterterrorism officials that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan, The New York Times reports. Officials say the memo seems intended to help justify the lack of action by the Trump administration on the matter. The memo reportedly contains no new information, and stresses that the CIA reported having “medium confidence” in the bounties’ existence, while the National Security Agency offered a different assessment. “The White House has portrayed it as not verified, but it’s never verified, so that struck me as misrepresentation. It would be very easy, if you want to take a different spin, to draw those out and amplify the ways it’s inconclusive,”Matthew Olsen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Times of the memo’s contents.