Pompeo Spars With Journalists Over Reports of Russian Bounties on US Soldiers
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he will not get into details about reports that Russian operatives placed bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and suggested that some news organizations put lives at risk by…
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he will not get into details about reports that Russian operatives placed bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and suggested that some news organizations put lives at risk by reporting on the alleged bounties.
During a press briefing on Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked if he believed President Donald Trump should have been briefed on intelligence assessments that Russian operatives were putting bounties on U.S. soldiers.
He fired back by suggesting that reporters were missing some context on the process officials go through when the brief the president on potential threats.
“You’ve got assumptions about things that just don’t reflect what it is that we’ve actually seen and done,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo went on to share an example of how officials in the administration decide to brief the president on threats.
“When the threat is sufficiently serious, the scale of the threat is of such importance that there’s an action that I think the president needs to be aware of, and the information that I’ve seen is sufficiently credible, then we make sure that the president is aware of that.”
“The president has been consistently aware of the challenges that Russia presents to us. And he is aware of the risk in Afghanistan,” he added.