The New York Times - USA (2020-06-29)

A12 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALMONDAY, JUNE 29, 2020

war there in the 1980s. “This is to-
tally outrageous. You would think
that the minute the president
heard of it, he would want to know
more instead of denying that he
knew anything.”
Spokespeople for the C.I.A., the
director of national intelligence
and the Pentagon declined to com-
ment on the new findings. A Na-
tional Security Council spokes-
man, John L. Ullyot, said in a
statement on Sunday night, “The
veracity of the underlying allega-
tions continues to be evaluated.”
One senior administration offi-
cial offered a new explanation on
Sunday, saying that Mr. Trump
was not briefed because the intel-
ligence agencies had come to no
consensus on the findings. But an-
other official said there was broad
agreement that the intelligence
assessment was accurate, with
some complexities because differ-
ent aspects of the intelligence —
including interrogations and sur-
veillance data — resulted in some
differences among agencies in
how much confidence to put in
each type.
Though the White House press
secretary, Kayleigh McEnany,
claimed on Saturday that Mr.
Trump had not been briefed about
the intelligence report, one Amer-
ican official had told The Times
that the report was briefed to the
highest levels of the White House.
Another said it was included in the
President’s Daily Brief, a compen-
dium of foreign policy and na-
tional security intelligence com-
piled for Mr. Trump to read.
Ms. McEnany did not challenge
The Times’s reporting on the ex-
istence of the intelligence assess-
ment, a National Security Council
interagency meeting about it in
late March and the White House’s
inaction. Multiple other news or-
ganizations also subsequently re-
ported on the assessment.
The officials briefed on the mat-
ter said that the assessment had
been treated as a closely held se-
cret but that the administration
expanded briefings about it over
the last week — including sharing
information about it with the
British government, whose forces
were among those said to have
been targeted.
Republicans in Congress de-
manded more information from
the Trump administration about
what happened and how the
White House planned to respond.
Representative Liz Cheney of
Wyoming, the third-ranking
House Republican, said in a Twit-
ter post on Sunday: “If reporting
about Russian bounties on U.S.
forces is true, the White House

must explain: 1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the PDB?

Who did know and when? 3.
What has been done in response
to protect our forces & hold Putin
accountable?”
Multiple Republicans re-
tweeted Ms. Cheney’s post. Rep-
resentative Daniel Crenshaw, Re-
publican of Texas and a former
member of the Navy SEALs, am-
plified her message, tweeting,
“We need answers.”
In a statement in response to
questions, Senator Mitch McCon-
nell of Kentucky, the majority

leader, said he had long warned about Russia’s work to undermine American interests in the Middle East and southwest Asia and noted that he wrote an amend- ment last year rebuking Mr. Trump’s withdrawal of forces from Syria and Afghanistan. “The United States needs to pri- oritize defense resources, main- tain a sufficient regional military presence and continue to impose serious consequences on those who threaten us and our allies — like our strikes in Syria and Af- ghanistan against ISIS, the Tal- iban and Russian mercenary

forces that threatened our part- ners,” Mr. McConnell said. Aides for other top Republicans either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday, including Repre- sentative Kevin McCarthy of Cali- fornia, the top House Republican; Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Sen- ator Jim Risch of Idaho, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Rela- tions Committee. In addition to saying he was never “briefed or told” about the intelligence report — a formula- tion that went beyond the White House denial of any formal brief- ing — Mr. Trump also cast doubt on the assessment’s credibility, which statements from his subor- dinates had not. Specifically, he described the intelligence report as being about “so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians”; the report described bounties paid to Taliban militants by Russian military intelligence officers, not di- rect attacks. Mr. Trump also sug- gested that the developments could be a “hoax” and questioned whether The Times’s sources — government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity — existed. Mr. Trump then pivoted to attack former Vice President Jo- seph R. Biden Jr., who criticized

the president on Saturday for fail- ing to punish Russia for offering bounties to the Taliban, as well as Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, who is the target of unsubstantiated claims that he helped a Ukrainian energy firm curry favor with the Obama administration when his father was vice president. “Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump Adminis- tration,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “With Corrupt Joe Biden & Obama, Russia had a field day, taking over important parts of Ukraine — Where’s Hunter?” American officials said the Rus- sian plot to pay bounties to Tal- iban fighters came into focus over the past several months after intelligence analysts and Special Operations forces put together key pieces of evidence. One official said the seizure of a large amount of American cash at one Taliban site got “everybody’s attention” in Afghanistan. It was not clear when the money was re- covered. Two officials said the information about the bounty hunting was “well known” among the intelligence community in Afghanistan, including the C.I.A.’s chief of sta- tion and other top officials there, like the military commandos hunting the Taliban. The information was distributed in intelligence reports and highlighted in some of them.

The assessment was compiled and sent up the chain of command to senior military and intelligence officials, eventually landing at the highest levels of the White House. The Security Council meeting in March came at a delicate time, as the coronavirus pandemic was be- coming a crisis and prompting shutdowns around the country. A former American official said the intelligence analyst who briefs the president and the national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, working with his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, would have been involved in any decision to brief Mr. Trump on Russia’s activities. The director of the C.I.A., Gina Haspel, might have also weighed in, the former official said. Ms. McEnany cited all three of those senior officials in her statement saying the president had not been briefed. National security officials have tracked Russia’s relationship with the Taliban for years and deter- mined that Moscow has provided financial and material support to senior and regional Taliban lead- ers. While Russia has at times co- operated with the United States and appeared interested in Af- ghan stability, it often seems to work at crosscurrents with its own national interest if the result is damage to American national interests, said a former senior Trump White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security assessments. Revenge is also a factor in Rus- sia’s support for the Taliban, the official said. Russia has been keen to even the scales after a bloody confrontation in 2018 in Syria, when a massive U.S. counter- attack killed hundreds of Syrian forces along with Russian merce- naries nominally supported by the Kremlin. “They are keeping a score sheet, and they want to punish us for that incident,” the official said. Both Russia and the Taliban have denied the American intelligence assessment. John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, said on “This Week” that he was not aware of the intelligence assessment, but he questioned Mr. Trump’s response on Twitter. “What would motivate the president to do that, because it looks bad if Russians are paying to kill Americans and we’re not doing anything about it?” Mr. Bolton said. “The presidential reaction is to say: ‘It’s not my responsibility. Nobody told me about it.’ And therefore to duck any complaints that he hasn’t acted effectively.” Mr. Bolton said this summed up Mr. Trump’s decision-making on national security issues. “It’s just unconnected to the reality he’s dealing with.”

Reporting was contributed by Ju-
lian E. Barnes, Charlie Savage,
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Michael
Schwirtz and Michael D. Shear.

Cash Discovery Tipped Off Spies to Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops

From Page A

An American helicopter over Afghanistan last year. Bounty hunting was “well known” in the intelligence community, officials said.

JIM HUYLEBROEK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, is accused of a “shadow war.”

POOL PHOTO BY ALEXEI NIKOLSKY

BUENOS AIRES — Days after
Argentina canceled all interna-
tional passenger flights to shield
the country from the new coro-
navirus, Juan Manuel Ballestero
began his journey home the only
way possible: He stepped aboard
his small sailboat for what turned
out to be an 85-day odyssey across
the Atlantic.
The 47-year-old sailor could
have stayed put on the tiny Por-
tuguese island of Porto Santo, to
ride out the era of lockdowns and
social distancing in a scenic place
largely spared by the virus. But
the idea of spending what he
thought could be “the end of the
world” away from his family, espe-
cially his father who was soon to
turn 90, was unbearable.
So he said he loaded his 29-foot
sailboat with canned tuna, fruit
and rice and set sail in mid-March.
“I didn’t want to stay like a cow-
ard on an island where there were
no cases,” Mr. Ballestero said. “I
wanted to do everything possible
to return home. The most impor-
tant thing for me was to be with
my family.”
The coronavirus pandemic has
upended life in virtually every
country on the planet, gutting the
global economy, exacerbating
geopolitical tension and halting
most international travel.
A particularly painful aspect of
this awful era has been the inabili-
ty of an untold number of people to
rush home to help ailing loved
ones and to attend funerals.
Friends tried to dissuade Mr.
Ballestero from embarking on the
perilous journey, and the authori-
ties in Portugal warned him he
might not be allowed to re-enter if
he ran into trouble and had to turn
back. But he was resolute.
“I bought myself a one-way
ticket and there was no going
back,” he said.
His relatives, used to Mr.
Ballestero’s itinerant lifestyle,
knew better than to try to talk him
out of it.
“The uncertainty of not know-

ing where he was for 50-some days was very rough,” said his father, Carlos Alberto Ballestero. “But we had no doubt this was going to turn out well.” Sailing across the Atlantic in a small boat is challenging in the best of circumstances. The added difficulties of doing it during a pandemic became clear three weeks into the trip. On April 12, the authorities in Cape Verde refused to allow him to dock at the island nation to re- stock his supply of food and fuel, Mr. Ballestero said. Hoping he still had enough food

to carry him through, he turned his boat west. With less fuel than he hoped for, he’d be more at the mercy of the winds. He was no stranger to spending long stretches of time at sea, but being alone on the open ocean is daunting to even the most experienced sailor. Days into the journey, he became panicked by the light of a ship that he thought was trailing him and seemed to be approaching closer and closer. “I started going as fast as possible,” Mr. Ballestero said. “I thought, if it gets very close, I’ll shoot.” Seafaring is a Ballestero family tradition. From the time he was 3, his father took him aboard the fishing vessels he captained. When he turned 18, he took a job on a fishing boat in southern Ar- gentina. Off the coast of Patago- nia, one of the most experienced fishermen aboard gave him a piece of advice that would become a way of life. “Go see the world,” the fisherman said. And so he did. Mr. Ballestero has spent much

of his life sailing, with stops in Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Bali, Ha- waii, Costa Rica, Brazil, Alaska and Spain. He has tagged sea turtles and whales for conservation organiza- tions and spent summers working as a skipper aboard boats owned by wealthy Europeans. He bought his sailboat, an Ohlson 29 named the Skua, in 2017, hoping to take it on a loop around the world. It proved up to the task of traversing an ocean on a planet plunged into crisis mode. “I wasn’t afraid, but I did have a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “It was very strange to sail in the middle of a pandemic with humanity tee- tering around me.” Sailing can be a lonely passion, and it was particularly so on this voyage for Mr. Ballestero, who each night tuned into the news on a radio for 30 minutes to take stock of how the virus was rip- pling across the globe. “I kept thinking about whether this would be my last trip,” he said. The expansiveness of the ocean notwithstanding, Mr. Ballestero felt he was in a quarantine of sorts, imprisoned by an unrelenting stream of foreboding thoughts about what the future held. “I was locked up in my own free- dom,” he recalled. On a particularly trying day, he turned to a bottle of whiskey for solace. But drinking only in- creased his anxiety. With his nerves frayed, Mr. Ballestero said he found himself praying and re- setting his relationship with God. “Faith keeps you standing in these situations,” he said. “I learned about myself; this voyage gave me lots of humility.” Several weeks into the trip, when his spirits were low, Mr. Ballestero said he was buoyed by wildlife sightings that felt like omens. He found solace in a pod of dol- phins that swam alongside his boat, on and off, for some 2, miles. “They would go and come back,” he said. “And one day, they seemed to say goodbye.” During a day when he had drunk heavily, he spotted a large

bird cruising nearby. It turned out to be a skua, the bird his boat is named after. “It was as if the bird was telling me not to give up, to keep going,” he said. One day, when he tired of canned food, Mr. Ballestero got a fishing rod and scanned a school of mahi-mahi. But he had a sudden reluctance to cast out a line.

“I didn’t want to kill one. It felt like killing a person,” he said. “I used to be a fisherman but after that experience it’s hard for me to kill now.” He went back to eating canned tuna. When he was approaching the Americas, a brutal wave rattled the boat some 150 miles from Vitória, Brazil, he said. That

episode forced him to make an un- planned pit stop in Vitória, adding about 10 days to a trip he had ex- pected to take 75 days. During that stop, Mr. Ballestero learned that his brother had told reporters in Argentina about the voyage, which enthralled people who were bored and cooped up at home. At the urging of friends, he created an Instagram account to document the final leg of the trip. When he made it to his native Mar del Plata, on June 17, he was startled by the hero’s welcome he received. “Entering my port where my father had his sailboat, where he taught me so many things and where I learned how to sail and where all this originated, gave me the taste of a mission accom- plished,” he said. A medical professional adminis- tered a test for Covid-19 on the dock. Within 72 hours, after the test came back negative, he was allowed to set foot on Argentine soil. While he didn’t get to celebrate his father’s 90th birthday in May, he did make it home in time for Fa- ther’s Day. “What I lived is a dream,” Mr. Ballestero said. “But I have a strong desire to keep on sailing.”

With Flights Banned, Sailor Relies on Sea

For 85-Day Journey to Family in Argentina

Juan Manuel Ballestero in Mar del Plata, Argentina. He Left the island of Porto Santo in April.

VICENTE ROBLES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ernesto Londoño contributed re-
porting.

Turning his back on

the relative calm of

Portuguese waters.

Mr. Ballestero, left, with his brother and their 90-year-old father.

JUAN MANUEL BALLESTERO

By DANIEL POLITI

The New York Times - USA (2020-06-29)

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