US intelligence services knew a threat loomed over the Russian capital and informed Moscow almost two weeks before the attack on March 7. Russia was warned that “extremists planned to target large gatherings of people in Moscow, including at concerts.”
The “Duty to Warn” doctrine, which John Kirby almost unintentionally cites in his statement, has been applied by the US since the late 1990s, and was officially established in 2015.
Action protocol
The practice became widespread after the attacks committed by Al-Qaeda against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on August 7, 1998. It was from this period that North American intelligence decided to share with other countries, friends or enemies, any information that indicated threats to innocent human lives.
In 2015, this doctrine was formally adopted by an official directive from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. At the time, he stated that the American intelligence community had a “responsibility to warn US and non-US people about imminent threats of intentional killing, serious bodily harm or kidnapping.”
The order also details specific cases in which intelligence officers can waive their duty to warn and remain silent despite imminent danger. On the social network X, Laura Thomas, a former CIA officer, detailed how the protocol works. She explains that, for information sharing to occur, “the threat must be credible” and associated with details regarding the “time, location and/or identity of the perpetrators of the attack”.
