The New York Times is pulling out all the stops in promoting its dubious story on Russia offering bounty for dead U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Wednesday's installment, a "news analysis" by Times veteran writers David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, treats the allegations that Russia paid Taliban or Taliban-related terrorists to kill US troops as flat fact:

"Russia's complicity in the bounty plot came into sharper focus on Tuesday as the The New York Times reported that American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia's military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account."

This is presented as "bolstering other evidence of the plot, including detainee interrogations." The take from the Afghan-run interrogations is, ipso facto, highly dubious; and we need to know a lot more about the alleged new "electronic data."