Gen. Keane: Media accepted Russian bounty story as 'truth' despite unverified intel

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Gen. Keane: Media accepted Russian bounty story as 'truth' despite unverified intel

Fox News senior strategic analyst Gen. Jack Keane reacts to U.S. intelligence backpedaling on last summer's reports of Russia placing bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers.

Fox News senior strategic analyst Gen. Jack Keane joined "Fox & Friends" Friday to explain what led to U.S. intelligence backpedaling on last summer's reports of Russia placing bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers. 

US INTEL OFFICIALS BACKPEDAL ON RUSSIA BOUNTY STORY CALLED 'HOAX' BY TRUMP

JACK KEANE: The media took this story, leaked I think to one of the major newspapers, and accepted it as the truth. But at the same time, our commanders in Afghanistan and our Central Command commander who oversees the entire Middle East, General Mackenzie, and the Pentagon, all said they do have a report to that effect but they rate that report as low to moderate in terms of its validity. Now, why is that? What does that gobbledygook really mean? It means that they only have likely a single report, which they have not been able to verify.

Then it turns out it was leaked and I'm assuming this may be right, and that it was a single detainee, plus a lot of money that had been found and he connected Russia with the money. But the command could not verify that and they had no other indicator whatsoever. So they did not support the conclusion that the media hyped all over that Russia was doing this. But listen, listen, the backdrop to this, though, is Russia does supply arms to the Taliban, they provide other resources. It wouldn't be a stretch for Russia to tell them, listen, point all those resources at U.S. troops.

That would not be a stretch, but we don't have any evidence of that.

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