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1. Anonymous U.S. and Taliban sources?
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“Who can forget how ‘successful’ interrogators can be in getting desired answers?”
writes Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Under the
CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Khalid Sheik Mohammed famously made at least 31 confessions, many of which were completely false.
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2. What purpose would bounties serve?
Everyone and their mother knows Trump wants to pull the troops out of Afghanistan, said Kiriakou.
“He ran on it and he has said it hundreds of times,” he said. “So why would the Russians bother putting a bounty on U.S. troops if we’re about to leave Afghanistan shortly anyway?”
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3. Why is this story being leaked now?
This story is “WMD [all over] again,” said McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President’s Daily Brief. He believes the stories seek to preempt DOJ findings on the origins of the Russiagate probe.
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