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American intelligence withheld information on Moscow terror attacks out of fear of exposing intelligence sources or methods

The adversarial relationship between Washington and Moscow prevented U.S. officials from sharing any information about the plot beyond what was necessary, out of fear Russian authorities might learn their intelligence sources or methods.

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  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Internal Russian intelligence reporting that most likely circulated at the highest levels of the government warned of the increased likelihood of an attack in Russia by ethnic Tajiks radicalized by ISIS-K, according to information obtained by the Dossier Center, a London research organization, and reviewed by The New York Times.

    But as Mr. Putin has advanced his political crackdown at home, its list of targets ballooned to include opposition figures like Aleksei A. Navalny, who died last month in a Russian prison, and his supporters, as well as L.G.B.T.Q.

    is a political police force, and as such it reflects Kremlin concerns,” said Mark Galeotti, a specialist on Russia’s security operations and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

    Russia is one of the chief military backers of the Islamic State’s opponents in the Middle East, including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, making Russian interests a key target of the Islamist extremist group.

    The failure to prevent the attack was probably the result of a combination of other factors, including fatigue after being “especially alert” during the period before Russia’s recent presidential election, said a European security official, who tracks the activities of the Russian intelligence services.

    Large terrorist attacks on Russian soil attributed to international groups like the Islamic State or Al Qaeda have been rare, and the country’s domestic security services have less experience tracking those threats and are less skilled at penetrating Central Asian extremist cells.


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  • I stay with "fear of exposing intelligence". There is no need to fear something that does not exist

  • The attack was claimed by ISIS-K - a foreign fighter offshoot/offbrand. Funny thing is that ISIS-K fighters were getting lifts from American chanook helicopters in Afghanistan and is largely made up of US assets and/or people formerly trained by the US in Afghanistan.

    Lots points to it being a CIA asset, tldr. They're a dirty army that can be used to keep an area distabilised or prevent other geopolitical powers from building infrastructure/influence (the nutshell purpose of ISIS-K, particularly in Afghanistan to prevent pipelines being built).

    They had the inside scoop on an attack outside any usual operating theatre by a group with tangible links to US cooperation/orientation? No kidding.

90 comments