Lack of US consensus on Russia? Bounty report poses sharper question.

In early May a classified CIA update for officers across U.S. intelligence agencies and others with security clearance reportedly cited evidence of a Russian program suspected of paying Taliban-linked militias to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan.

The military and intelligence agencies were investigating whether the bounty program might have played a part in an April 2019 roadside bombing near Bagram Air Base in which three Marine reservists were killed. The United States had evidence – in the form of a half-million dollars in cash found in a Seal Team 6 raid of a Taliban hideout – that bounties had already been paid.

And intelligence from captured Taliban fighters spurred the U.S. to investigate a funding channel connecting money handlers in Afghanistan with sources in Russia. 

Information on the alleged Russian bounty program had already been included in a

Question of consensusA pattern concerning RussiaTrump-Putin phone calls