Pompeo warned Russia against paying bounties
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned Russia’s foreign minister against Moscow paying bounties to Taliban-linked militants and other Afghan fighters for killing American service members, U.S. offi- cials said.
Pompeo’s warning is the first known rebuke from a senior American official to Russia over the bounties program, and it runs counter to President Trump’s insistence that the intelligence from U.S. government agencies over the matter is a “hoax.” The action indicates that Pompeo, who previously served as Trump’s C.I.A. director, believes the intelligence warranted a stern message.
Pompeo delivered the warning in a call on July 13 with the minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, choosing to do so during a conversation that, officially, was about an unrelated topic — the possibility of a meeting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. officials said in the past week.
The secretary of state did not explicitly point to the covert bounties scheme orga- nized by a Russian military intelligence unit that was first reported in late June by The New York Times, most likely because the details of what American intelligence has learned and how it gathered the information remain classified, one of the officials said. In public, Pompeo has care- fully avoided answering direct questions about American intelligence on the Russian bounties. But late last month in congressional testimony, he said broadly that he had raised with Lavrov “all of the issues” that put American interests at risk.
In the call, Pompeo made it clear to Lavrov in language about payouts and red lines that the United States was strongly opposed to the program, the official said, adding that the secretary of state had been livid about what the intelligence had said about the bounties.
Pompeo and the State Department have been careful not to reveal any details of actions he might have taken based on the intelligence over the bounties. That is perhaps because of both the classified material and to avoid potential fury from Trump, who has strongly dismissed reports of the intelligence and has tried to cultivate a friendship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
Pompeo’s private move is the latest example of a common occurrence in the administration: American officials quietly carrying out actions that are at odds with Trump’s statements.
The Times reported that senior American officials, including some on the White House National Security Council, had debated for months over what to do about the Russian effort. Russian officials have denounced the reports on the bounties as lies.
Trump said last week that he did not mention American intelligence assessments of the bounties program when he spoke this month with Putin. “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and, frankly, that’s an issue that many people said was fake news,” he said in an interview with “Axios on HBO,” even though the C.I.A. has placed medium confidence in the assessment.