MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Politics & the NationBY RACHEL PANNETTSome California motorists
thought they hit the jackpot after
an armored truck spilled cash
across a freeway north of San
Diego, causing a traffic jam on
Friday as people leaped out of
their cars and scooped up fistfuls
of bills.
But “finders keepers” doesn’t
apply in this case, and authorities
have promised to track down any
motorists who left the scene with
the looted money.
It might not be all that hard.
The incident was captured on
social media, with people posting
videos of themselves literally
jumping for joy as they scooped
up wads of cash off the highway
shortly after 9:15 a.m. local time
on Friday.
“This is the most insane thing
I’ve ever seen,” Demi Bagby said
as she panned her camera to show
people all around her bending
over to collect the scattered bills.
“Someone dropped money all
over the freeway.” The fitness in-
fluencer beamed the footage to
her 2.6 million followers on Insta-
gram. She didn’t immediately re-
ply to a request for comment
Saturday.
California Highway Patrol Sgt.Curtis Martin told reporters that
the truck had been headed from
San Diego to an office of the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
“One of the doors popped open,
and bags of cash fell out,” he said.
“One of the bags broke apart, and
there was cash all over the lanes.”
He said authorities plan to use
social media videos and photos to
track down anyone who fails to
return the money.
“If you found money on the
freeway, it is not your money,”
Martin told local news station
KCRA. “It belongs to the FDIC
and this armored truck and the
bank. It needs to be returned.”Two people were arrested at
the scene, and the California
Highway Patrol and the FBI said
Friday that anyone who took
money needs to return it within
48 hours “in order to avoid a
potential criminal charge.”
By Friday afternoon, about a
dozen people had returned cash,
which was mostly in $1 and $
bills, the San Diego Union-Tri-
bune reported.
According to legal experts,
common law allows anyone who
finds an abandoned item to keep
it. But the rule doesn’t apply when
items are unintentionally lost by
their owners, such as a wallet thatfalls out of someone’s pocket or, in
this case, when an armored truck
driving along a busy freeway in-
advertently loses bags of cash.
In one especially bizarre exam-
ple of how the law works, a bar-
gain hunter from North Carolina
picked up a barbecue smoker at
an auction. After taking it home,
he opened the grill to find the
remains of a gnarled human leg.
His report made the news and its
amputee owner came forward to
claim his former limb. The barbe-
cue enthusiast didn’t want to
return it, and their subsequent
custody battle made internation-
al headlines, spawning a 2015documentary: “Finders Keepers.”
(Spoiler alert: A judge ordered
him to return the leg.)
In this case, the finder has
certain responsibilities. If the
cash was left on the freeway,
where it was strewn when the
armored truck’s doors flung open,
its owners would know where to
find it. But that changes if some-
one filled their pockets with cash,
jumped back in their car and
drove away, although in this case,
police say they’ll be running
checks on people’s faces captured
on social media and checking
license plate numbers.
[email protected]Authorities want money returned after cash spills onto California highway
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S0114 4X 3Plitics?BY PAUL SONNE
AND JOHN HUDSONThe White House has asked
the Pentagon to provide a run-
down of exercises the U.S. mili-
tary has taken in recent years in
Europe to deter Russia, as well
as the justification for each mis-
sion, as the Biden administra-
tion takes stock of military oper-
ations in the air, on land and at
sea that are designed to check
Kremlin power and reassure U.S.
allies and partners in Europe.
The purpose of the request,
according to a senior Biden
administration official, is to give
the White House full visibility
into U.S. military exercises and
other deterrence activities in
Europe so new missions can be
evaluated and scheduled in the
context of past actions. The bulk
of the exercises in Europe focus
on protecting against Russia,
but the request, which hasn’t
been previously reported, also
related to other U.S. military
activities on the continent, ac-
cording to officials who spoke
on the condition of anonymity
to discuss internal delibera-
tions.
U.S. military missions in Eu-
rope have grown in scope in
recent years amid tensions with
Moscow, leading to a slew of
exercises, observation flights
and maritime operations under-
taken to ward off the Russian
military from any further ad-
venturism in Europe and reas-
sure allies in the region that the
United States takes seriously its
commitments to their defense.
Some outside experts have
raised concerns that some of the
missions have become too pro-
vocative and should be reevalu-
ated, even though the senior
Biden administration official
said the White House isn’t seek-
ing the information from the
Pentagon with a view to curtail-
ing the activities.
In many cases, the missions
have extended beyond NATO
allies to include partner nations
bordering Russia, such as
Ukraine and Georgia. The Unit-
ed States doesn’t have a treaty
obligation to defend those na-
tions but has backed their right
to sovereignty and provided
support to their militaries. Both
countries have endured Krem-
lin-backed incursions into their
territory.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin has become increasingly
vocal in recent months about
military activities by the United
States and its allies near Russia,
particularly in Ukraine.
In a speech on Thursday,
Putin said NATO countries were
crossing “certain limits” by fly-
ing strategic bombers 20 kilo-
meters (about 12 miles) off the
coast of Russia over the Black
Sea that carry “very serious
weapons,” a reference to the
nuclear warheads the planes
can hold.
“We regularly express our
concerns about this, we talk
about red lines, but of course we
understand that our partners
are very idiosyncratic and —
how to put it mildly — they treat
all our warnings and conversa-
tions about red lines very super-
ficially,” Putin said.
U.S. allies on NATO’s eastern
flank, as well as partners in
Ukraine and Georgia, have
pushed for a continuation and
expansion of military activities
in Europe to send a clear mes-
sage to Russia about unwaver-
ing U.S. support and prevent a
replay of 2014, when Russia
annexed Crimea from neighbor-
ing Ukraine and fueled a still-
running conflict in the country’s
east.
U.S.-led exercises have taken
on increased importance for
European nations in recent
months, as Russian forces mass-
ing near the Ukrainian border
and a migrant crisis on Poland’s
border with Belarus have rattled
European leaders and under-
scored Russia’s power to desta-
bilize the continent.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister
Dmytro Kuleba underscored the
point on a visit to Washington
this month, saying the United
States and Ukraine must send
the right messages and take the
right actions “not to provoke
Russia, not to give it an excuse,
but to deter Russia and demoti-
vate it... from resorting to
further escalation.”The White House hasn’t made
any decision to modify or curtail
the U.S. military’s missions and
exercises in Europe, the senior
Biden administration official
emphasized.
“The important thing is that
all we are looking for is basic
information from the last sev-
eral years of where we have done
exercises, how many troops
were involved, what policy ob-
jectives they were in support of,”
the senior administration offi-
cial said, describing the request
from the White House National
Security Council to the Defense
Department, which was sent
earlier this year, as “regular
order.”
The senior official said the
amount of information about
such missions coming from the
Pentagon to the White House
when Biden took office was
nowhere near what it was dur-
ing the Obama administration,
and the National Security Coun-
cil was looking to restore the
information flow.
Pentagon press secretary
John Kirby said in a statement
that coordination of U.S. mili-
tary activities through the
White House National Security
Council is appropriate.
“The Defense Department’s
coordination with NSC, State
Department and other inter-
agency partners is in keeping
with our collective desire to see
a de-escalation of tensions in
the region and to help create
more space for diplomatic reso-
lution,” Kirby said.Envelope-pushing missions
In the years since Russia
annexed Crimea in 2014, the
United States and its NATO
allies have backed Ukraine with
training and arms, in addition
to mounting regular exercises,
at times with Ukrainian forces,
to deter Russia from escalating
the conflict in the country’s east.
U.S. and NATO troops from
Western Europe rotate through
Poland and the Baltics, keeping
a constant presence on the alli-
ance’s eastern flank as a deter-
rent to a Russian invasion.
Despite President Donald
Trump’s perceived affinity for
Russia, he surrounded himself
with hard-liners at the Penta-
gon, State Department and Na-
tional Security Council who
stepped up military activities
designed to send a message to
Moscow.
At times, the result has been
envelope-pushing missions.
In 2020, U.S. destroyers en-
tered the Barents Sea, where
Russia’s Northern Fleet is locat-
ed, for the first time since the
Cold War unaccompanied by
Russian vessels. U.S. supersonic
B1-B Lancers trained with
Ukrainian jets near Russia for
the first time also in 2020, and,
in another first, U.S. nuclear-ca-
pable B-52s flew through Ukrai-
nian airspace, looping near
Crimea alongside Ukrainian
fighter jets.
Some of the activities have led
to close calls.
Last year, a Russian fighter jet
came within 100 feet of anAmerican B-52 conducting an
exercise with NATO allies over
the Black Sea, rocking the heavy
bomber with its afterburner and
prompting a condemnation by
the Pentagon.
Earlier this year, Britain sent
a destroyer, the HMS Defender,
into the waters off Crimea,
prompting more than 20 Rus-
sian fighter jets to surround the
vessel and eliciting a heated
response from Moscow.
Such activities have led to
calls by some experts for the
Biden administration to review
and possibly rein in certain
military activities in Europe
that risk crossing the line into
provoking Russia.
“Asking the question about
the purpose of all this activity is
totally legitimate and impor-
tant, because if we are just doing
stuff for the sake of doing stuff,
which tends to be the default
mode, then that can lead to
problematic situations where
we are having dangerous inter-
actions with Russia for reasons
unclear,” said Samuel Charap, a
senior political scientist and
Russia expert at the Rand Corp.
A study cataloguing nearly
3,000 incidents between NATO
and Russian forces from 2013 to
2020, written by military ana-
lysts Ralph Clem and Raymond
Finch, found significantly in-
creased activity after 2016.
Clem, who has raised alarm
bells about the risk of encoun-
ters between U.S. and Russian
airplanes and the possibility of a
mishap, said some of the U.S.deterrence activities aimed at
Moscow aren’t well thought-out
in geopolitical terms, especially
those involving non-NATO
states such as Ukraine.
“The most troubling thing
about these displays is that it
puts U.S. strategic assets to use
for a purpose which is not
clearly defined — and to me,
that is very risky,” Clem said. “Is
anybody in the U.S. defense
establishment thinking about
fighting the Russians in the
Black Sea over Ukraine? The
answer to that has to be, must
be, no.”
Supporters of the current
tempo of U.S. military activities
in Europe emphasize that Mos-
cow has been breaking norms of
its own and engaging in threat-
ening behavior that must be met
with resolve and a heightened
response, even if missions near
Russian territory entail greater
risk.
Earlier this month, Russia
carried out its first ever strike
on a satellite in space using an
Earth-based missile. Moscow
has been developing and testing
an exotic array of nuclear weap-
onry. Russian operatives stand
accused of poisoning an ex-spy
on British soil with a chemical
weapon and carrying out an
assassination in broad daylight
in a German park, in addition to
menacing cyber activities, in-
cluding a giant U.S. government
hack through the software sold
by SolarWinds.
Russia’s military has also en-
gaged in escalating activities,
most recently holding a joint
exercise with Belarus called Za-
pad 2021, which reportedly in-
volved 200,000 troops, making
it one of Europe’s biggest mili-
tary exercises in decades.
“I think we have been re-
sponding to very aggressive
Russian behavior,” said Eric
Edelman, a former U.S. ambas-
sador to Turkey and top Penta-
gon official during the George
W. Bush administration.
Supporters of forward-lean-
ing joint activities with Ukraine
say the message the United
States is sending to Russia by
flying strategic bombers over
the country may not be that
Washington is ready to go to war
for Kyiv but that the United
States is prepared to support
Ukrainian forces and make it
difficult for Moscow to further
destabilize or seize territory
from a neighboring nation that
seeks closer ties to the West.
“I want Putin’s constant con-
cern to be: If they are willing to
do this for someone who is not a
treaty ally, what would they do if
I tried to do something in
Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania?”
Edelman said.
He continued, “Given Russian
behavior over the last six
months, while you should al-
ways be reviewing things and
always be careful not to do
things that are unnecessarily
provocative, you also don’t want
to give the suggestion that you
are backing away because of
threats being made by Putin.”
[email protected]
[email protected]U.S. reviews military drills in Europe amid Russia tension
GLEB GARANICH/REUTERS
U.S. Marines take part in exercises in Ukraine in July. A senior Biden administration official stressed that the White House’s review of
military operations in Europe, which have focused on deterring Russian aggression, doesn’t indicate a desire to curtail the activities.White House scrutinizesexpanded deterrence that
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