Intelligence on Russian bounty plot was included in the President’s Daily Brief earlier this year, source says

That assessment, the source said, was backed up by “several pieces of information” that supported the view that there was an effort by the Russian intelligence unit — the GRU — to pay bounties to kill US soldiers, including interrogation of Taliban detainees and electronic eavesdropping. The source said there was some other information that did not corroborate this view but said, nonetheless, ‘”This was a big deal. When it’s about US troops you go after it 100%, with everything you got.”

Trump also claimed in a Sunday evening tweet, “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP.”

The US intelligence community and military are investigating to see if there is further corroboration, and if the National Security Council staff can recommend response options. The source said the White House is now claiming the leak will ruin the opportunity to get a real answer.

There is “no consensus within the intelligence community” about whether Russia offered to pay bounties to the Taliban for killing American troops, McEnany said. There is “dissent” within the intelligence community about the intelligence, which she insisted had not reached Trump’s desk because “it wasn’t verified.”

The source tells CNN that intelligence of this nature with risk to US troops should be assumed to be true until you know otherwise.

The cascade of developments around the Russian effort have prompted a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to demand that the Trump administration explain what it knew and when.

The White House briefed a group of House Republican lawmakers on the matter on Monday, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and CIA Director Gina Haspel to provide all-member briefings to Congress on the intelligence.

One of those House Republicans, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texan who is the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN that he had learned in the briefing that dissenting views among agencies within the intelligence community is the reason why the intelligence was not briefed to Trump.

“While there was a stream of reporting on this alleged bounty issue, intelligence from one agency, there was another agency with a very strong dissenting view on this intelligence,” McCaul said.

“When that happens, typically, the national security adviser goes back through the NSC and tries to vet this to get to a point where it can be actionable. They don’t want to throw intelligence in front of the President when there’s basically a dissent within the community itself,” he added.

McCaul said officials said that the top officials in the Trump White House were attempting to resolve the diverging views when news of the Russian effort broke.

Several key Senate Republicans said they are seeking more information from the Trump administration, too.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told CNN’s Jim Acosta Monday that the White House explanation that Trump wasn’t briefed because of conflicting intelligence wasn’t sufficient.

“It is frequently the case that the President should be briefed on matters where there is no absolute certainly about the intelligence on a given topic,” Schiff said.

“It’s not sufficient to say we didn’t tell him because we couldn’t dot every I, cross every T, prove every point. … If it goes to the protection of our troops, that’s something that needs to be briefed to the commander in chief.”

There have been more than 2,400 total deaths of US service members since the start of America’s longest war in 2001. Last year was the deadliest in five years for the US in Afghanistan, with 23 service members killed during operations in the country in 2019.

This story has been updated with additional information Monday.