The Instances first reported in June that the C.I.A. had concluded that the Russian operatives had covertly supplied and paid bounties to a Taliban
The Instances first reported in June that the C.I.A. had concluded that the Russian operatives had covertly supplied and paid bounties to a Taliban-linked prison community to incentivize extra frequent assaults on American and different coalition troops in Afghanistan amid peace talks to finish the long-running conflict there. However although the Nationwide Safety Council assembled a spread of potential responses, like a diplomatic warning or sanctions, months had handed and the White Home licensed none of them.
Amid bipartisan criticism, the White Home has defended its months of inaction by falsely suggesting that nobody deemed the C.I.A. evaluation worthy of sharing with Mr. Trump — in actual fact, it was in his written briefing in February, though officers have advised Congress that his aides didn’t orally deliver his consideration to it — and by portraying the data as unsure.
Amid the turbulence, particulars about its foundation have trickled out. The constellation of proof included the accounts of interrogated Afghan detainees, a big seizure of money present in a raid, knowledge displaying transfers of funds from a checking account managed by the G.R.U. to the Taliban, and journey information displaying intermediaries going between Russia and Afghanistan.
There was a further clue, two officers confirmed this week: Not less than one passport quantity utilized by somebody suspected of involvement within the bounty operation was near a slender vary of passport numbers that Western intelligence officers say are identified to have been assigned to operatives from the G.R.U.’s Unit 29155, suggesting it got here from the identical batch.
The Instances requested officers about passport numbers after an anonymously run weblog known as Nightingale, which focuses on Russian covert operations, reported on Tuesday {that a} businessman named Rahmatullah Azizi used a Russian passport quantity close to that vary. American and Afghan officers have recognized Mr. Azizi as a key intermediary believed to have handed out Russian cash to Taliban-linked fighters for concentrating on coalition troops in Afghanistan. He’s believed to be in Russia.
The officers confirmed that batch passport numbers have been typically a part of the intelligence that contributed to the C.I.A.’s evaluation with out discussing the weblog’s particular claims. However the disclosure of the extra sort of proof additional undercut the White Home’s portrayal of the intelligence as too insubstantial to advantage presidential consideration.
Unit 29155 has primarily been identified for its hyperlinks to a number of partly botched covert operations that got here to mild in Europe, together with the 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had labored for British intelligence after which defected, and his daughter; an tried coup in Montenegro in 2016; and the poisoning of an arms producer in Bulgaria a yr earlier.