{"id":60619,"date":"2020-07-12T01:02:20","date_gmt":"2020-07-11T23:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/?p=60619\/"},"modified":"2020-07-12T01:02:20","modified_gmt":"2020-07-11T23:02:20","slug":"esper-leaks-hurt-u-s-national-security-no-evidence-of-russian-bounties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/blog\/2020\/07\/12\/esper-leaks-hurt-u-s-national-security-no-evidence-of-russian-bounties\/","title":{"rendered":"Esper: Leaks Hurt U.S. National Security — No Evidence of Russian \u201cBounties\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, appearing before the House Armed Services Committee Thursday, were bombarded with questions about the so-called bounty-gate affair, in which Russian military intelligence was claimed to have paid bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. While both men vowed to protect American troops, Esper saved his most impassioned words to rail against leaks to the media. \u00abWe are aggressively pursuing leaks within the Defense Department,\u00bb he said. \u00abI\u00bbve launched an investigation that is under way to go after leaks, whether it\u00bbs of classified information or unclassified information that is sensitive, and also unauthorized discussions with the media. All those things, again, hurt our nation\u2019s security. They undermine our troops, their safety. They affect our relations with other countries. They undermine our national policy. It’s bad.\u00bb<\/p>\n

As for the alleged intelligence, Esper said \u00abTo the best of my recollection, I have not received a briefing that included the word `bounty.\u2019\u00bb Esper was then asked where the intelligence on Russian bounties came from, to which he replied: \u00abIt was not produced by a DoD intelligence agency.\u00bb Later in the hearing, Esper said [https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/defense\/506641-top-general-vows-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-russia-bounty-intel<\/a>] that he was briefed on intelligence about \u00abpayments\u00bb to militants. Esper said he was first made aware of the intelligence at issue in February. Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Scott Miller, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, were aware as early as January, Esper said, adding \u00abneither thought the reports were credible as they dug into them.\u00bb
\n<\/b>
\nMilley, for his part, vowed to \u00abget to the bottom\u00bb of the alleged intelligence reporting and pledged his \u00ab1000 percent commitment\u00bb to sufficiently protecting U.S. forces. Milley later called the bounties a \u00abunique, discrete piece of information that is not corroborated,\u00bb but said Pentagon officials \u00abare taking it serious, we\u2019re going to get to the bottom of it, we\u00bbre going to find out if in fact it\u2019s true, and if it is true, we will take action.\u00bb <\/b><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, appearing before the House Armed Services Committee Thursday, were bombarded with questions about the so-called bounty-gate affair, in which Russian military intelligence was claimed to have paid bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. While both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":60620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[842],"class_list":["post-60619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","tag-lang-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60619"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60632,"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60619\/revisions\/60632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}