A Russian Plot to Kill U.S. Soldiers

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2020

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

A New York Times investigation has revealed evidence of a secret Russian operation to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan — and of the failure of the Trump administration to act on that intelligence. As lawmakers from both parties react with fury, one of the journalists who first reported the story tells us what has come to light so far. Guest: Eric Schmitt, who covers terrorism and national security for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: The Times reported on Monday that President Trump was provided a written briefing on the intelligence about the suspected Russian plot in late February.“If it does come out as true, obviously the heartache would be terrible,” said the father of a Marine who died in a 2019 car bombing in Afghanistan, which is reportedly the focus of investigators’ work.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow. This is Daily.
0:10.3	Today, a Times investigation has revealed evidence of a secret Russian operation
0:17.6	to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan and the failure of the Trump administration
0:24.3	to act on that evidence. I spoke with my colleague, Eric Schmidt, one of the reporters who broke
0:32.7	the original story about what we know now. It's Wednesday, July 1st.
0:42.9	How is it that the US first learned that Russia was up to something in Afghanistan?
0:55.5	So Michael, about six months ago or so, US commandos working with Afghan allies carried out a raid
1:02.5	on a Taliban safe house and they made a remarkable discovery. They found some 500,000 dollars
1:10.3	in American money inside this safe house. Now, to be sure from time to time,
1:16.4	when they do these kind of raids, you find weapons and you find other kinds of things, even some money.
1:22.2	But the military sources that we've talked to said they'd never seen such a large hall.
1:28.4	What would these guys be doing with 500,000 dollars? How did they get it? And what was it going to be
1:34.6	used for? So this set off a lot of questions. And as they conduct other raids, the commandos,
1:43.3	CIA, other authorities, and Afghanistan, they seize the cell phones of different fighters,
1:50.9	Taliban fighters. And they start exploiting that to see if there's any clues in the cell phones that
1:56.0	might lead them back to the source of this money. But perhaps one of the most important things that
2:01.2	happens is when they seize a couple of very important senior Taliban and Taliban-related figures.
2:10.0	And of course, that's one of the first things they want to ask these operatives. Do you know
2:14.8	anything about this money? And what did the Milton say? They had a remarkable story to tell
2:22.8	that this was money that they had been paid, that they'd been paid by a secret of Russian military
2:29.6	intelligence unit, for the express purpose of killing American, British, and other coalition forces
2:37.3	in Afghanistan. But these investigators, they were searching around for other proofs. How to
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