Russia allegedly offered bounties for killing American soldiers

DONALD TRUMP’S blind spot for Russian aggression might seem like a stale fact of American political life by now—were it not that the aggression keeps getting worse. The latest example, according to an intelligence leak to the New York Times, which has since been widely corroborated, was a Russian scheme to pay bounties to Islamic militants in Afghanistan in return for killing American soldiers. A possible attempt to derail the peace deal signed between America and the Taliban in January, the scheme may have been behind the killing of three US marines last year.

Evidence of it is reported to include testimonies from captured militants and half a million dollars retrieved by Afghan agents. There are reported to have been initial doubts about the intelligence’s reliability. But it was nonetheless thought solid enough to be included in Mr Trump’s daily intelligence briefing dossier in late February. It was discussed in an inter-agency meeting at the National Security Council in March. Possible American reprisals for the alleged plot are said to have been drawn up—ranging from raising the issue with Russia to slapping sanctions on it. Yet the matter appears to have ended there.

Mr Trump claims to have known nothing about any of this, his gatekeepers having ruled the intelligence too flaky to be worth...