AFGHANISTAN/MILITARY/RUSSIA: “A memo produced in recent days by the office of the nation’s top intelligence official acknowledged that the C.I.A. and top counterterrorism officials have assessed that Russia appears to have offered bounties to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan, but emphasized uncertainties and gaps in evidence, according to three officials.
The memo is said to contain no new information, and both its timing and its stressing of doubts suggested that it was intended to bolster the Trump administration’s attempts to justify its inaction on the months-old assessment, the officials said.”
-Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, Rukmini Callimachi and Adam Goldman, “New Administration Memo Seeks to Foster Doubts About Suspected Russian Bounties,” nytimes.com, July 3, 2020