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American intelligence withheld information on Moscow terror attacks out of fear of exposing intelligence sources or methods (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

During the Obama administration, the national security director (I think) created the policy of "duty to inform". The idea being that American intelligence agencies had a duty to inform a target if they knew about an upcoming attack (even an adversary). A big exception is when the warning would compromise the source of the information.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

TIL. They often haven't lived up to their stated commitment to protecting civilians, but for a number of reasons including how easy this specific one is to check I can see how it makes sense to do consistently.