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Groundbreaking news coverage of the Russian bounty program broke on June 26, a Friday. Remember when Friday was the day news items were dumped in the hope that no one would care? In case you haven’t noticed, Fridays have been hot lately. I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
The New York Times broke the story that Russian military intelligence secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan in recent months. That first report when on to say, “The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March. …” Of course, initially, that was not the disturbing part of the story, but it soon became so.
The Trump administration had no comment that Friday. By Sunday morning, as the president was preparing to play his second round of golf in consecutive days, the company line out of the White House was that the president and vice president had not been briefed on the alleged intelligence. In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Associated Press had all confirmed the bulk of The Times’ original story.
Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike had issued statements over the weekend, aghast at the reporting while demanding information and preparation for action. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, and Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, were among them.
At her media availability the following Monday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany focused on two main talking points: The president and vice president had not been briefed on the intelligence, and the reason for this lack of a briefing was due to a lack of consensus on the validity of the information within the intelligence community.
That is a remarkable strategy. Remarkable in the hopelessness of it.
Every president with whom I am familiar would react to intel like this with words like, “Heads will roll!” Or at a minimum, “I will not rest till I get to the bottom of this.” Not Trump.
His team cannot explain why there had been no action on the matter. Their slowness in responding to the initial media reports indicates a level of confusion indicative of governing malpractice. But what is most troubling, at least at this initial phase of discussion, is that the White House believes the lack of knowledge of the intel, whether confirmed by consensus or not, is some legitimate message to Americans.
It’s an episode straight out of the playbook of Sgt. Schultz, the buffoon guard at a Nazi prison camp on the 1960s and 1970s sitcom, “Hogan’s Heroes.” Schultz’s famous line anytime he found himself in a pinch about how the American prisoners were manipulating him was to exclaim, “I know nothing!” For you kids, which means everyone under about 50, look it up on YouTube; it is still funny.
It worked for Schultz. Why shouldn’t it work for Trump and Mike Pence?
The problem is that further reporting showed that the “briefing” McEnany claimed never happened actually did appear in the President’s Daily Brief in February. The “PDB” is an example of what Trump was already infamous for not reading. Now we find out the vice president has not been reading it, either.
By Tuesday, Trump acknowledged that he had now been briefed. Whew. That is good news. Except now the new and improved White House messaging is that this is just another “Russian hoax.”
Getting to the bottom of this episode of potentially catastrophic foreign affairs dereliction is required. I never thought I would see a presidential administration adamantly use ignorance as a defense for mishandling intelligence. In some ways, I guess it worked.•
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Leppert is an author and governmental affairs consultant in Indianapolis. He writes at MichaelLeppert.com. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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