So did Russian intelligence give bounties to the Taliban?

The accusation that the Russian GRU military intelligence service offered bounties to the Taliban in 2019 to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan has still not been proven. In fact most of the top US military have not made up their minds, based on the intelligence they have seen. Mark Esper, the US defence secretary, and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appearing yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee, even said he couldn't recall the word "bounty" in any intelligence he had seen about the Russians in Afghanistan. But then he admitted he did remember seeing the word "payments". So we're splitting hairs here. Payments or bounty, there was intelligence on some Russian skuldugerry and both Esper and Milley read it. The fact that Trump didn't actually read it, or says he didn't, doesn't undermine the accuracy of the initial report in The New York Times that a GRU unit operating in Afghanistan was suspected of paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers. What Milley and General Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, have said is that there is no definitive evidence that if bounties WERE paid that they led directly to US combat deaths. Trump still thinks the whole story is a hoax. Nothing unusual about that. The most interesting thing about the whole subject is the decision made by the senior CIA briefer who made no spoken reference to the Russian bounty intelligence to Trump but did include it in the Presidential Briefing document. I haven't mentioned the briefer's name so far but now it has become widely known because she has given an address about what her job entails. So the CIA briefer at the heart of the Russian bounty story is Beth Sanner. Speaking to the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a non-partisan professional forum based in Arlington, Virginia, she said she had learnt to adapt the contents of her briefings to suit the character and interests of the particular president. Does that mean she didn't mention the Russian connection in her oral remarks to Trump in February because she didn't think the intelligence was sufficiently confirmed or because she knew Trump didn't like to hear anything bad about Putin and co? We'll never know!