Intelligence Community Goes to the Washington Post to Push a Claim That It Knew When Russia Would Invade Ukraine – Opinion

According to a major exclusive in Tuesday’s Washington Post, before Russia invaded Ukraine, “U.S. intelligence community had penetrated multiple points of Russia’s political leadership, spying apparatus and military, from senior levels to the front lines, according to U.S. officials.” If so, we might add, how well did that work out for us?

That is the way it works Washington PostThe scene.

On a sunny October morning, the nation’s top intelligence, military and diplomatic leaders filed into the Oval Office for an urgent meeting with President Biden. They arrived bearing a highly classified intelligence analysis, compiled from newly obtained satellite images, intercepted communications and human sources, that amounted to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war plans for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

For months, Biden administration officials had watched warily as Putin massed tens of thousands of troops and lined up tanks and missiles along Ukraine’s borders. Jake Sullivan was the national security advisor and had been focusing on increasing intelligence about Russia and Ukraine as the summer drew to a close. He had set up the Oval Office meeting after his own thinking had gone from uncertainty about Russia’s intentions, to concern he was being too skeptical about the prospects of military action, to alarm.

The session was one of several meetings that officials had about Ukraine that autumn — sometimes gathering in smaller groups — but was notable for the detailed intelligence picture that was presented. Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat down in the armchairs by the fire while Gen. Mark A. Milley and Lloyd Austin, Defense Secretary, were seated around the coffee tables with Gen. Mark A. Milley and other Joint Chiefs of Staff members.

Tasked by Sullivan with putting together a comprehensive overview of Russia’s intentions, they told Biden that the intelligence on Putin’s operational plans, added to ongoing deployments along the border with Ukraine, showed that all the pieces were now in place for a massive assault.

We had everything, according to Washington Post. The axes and sequence of Russian special operation forces and Russian airborne operations force actions were well-known. Joey SoftServe found himself in an awkward situation because of the #OrangeManBad.

Biden, who was elected promising not to allow the nation into new wars after a promise, was clear that Putin should be either deterred, or confronted and that the United States shouldn’t act alone. The United States was also weak in credibility and NATO wasn’t unified about how to handle Moscow. After a disastrous occupation of Iraq, the chaos that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and four years of President Donald Trump seeking to undermine the alliance, it was far from certain that Biden could effectively lead a Western response to an expansionist Russia.

Euros were suspicious of US intelligence and believed it made it seem more authoritative than it actually was. On the other hand, the Ukrainians were afraid that reacting to intelligence in which they didn’t have 100% confidence could possibly precipitate a Russian invasion and would definitely hurt Ukraine’s economy.

This article is worthwhile reading. My link is not behind a paywall. Enjoy the illustrations. You will find that any stereotypes about French President Macron or his cucks are valid.

Putin didn’t commit and appeared to have more-pressing matters at hand. “To be perfectly frank with you, I wanted to go [play] ice hockey, because right now I’m at the gym. But before starting my workout, let me assure you, I will first call my advisers.”

“Je vous remercie, Monsieur le President,” Putin concluded, thanking him in French.

He hangs up and can be heard making a joyful sound as he laughs. He and his advisers believed they had made a breakthrough. Macron’s diplomatic adviser, Emmanuel Bonne, even danced.

You will be validated if you felt that Anthony Blinken was the worst thing our elite institutions can create.

After again going over the Ukraine situation, Blinken stopped and asked, “Sergei, tell me what it is you’re really trying to do?” Was this all really about the security concerns Russia had raised again and again — about NATO’s “encroachment” toward Russia and a perceived military threat? Or was it about Putin’s almost theological belief that Ukraine was and always had been an integral part of Mother Russia?

Lavrov left his staff behind and opened the door without answering.

A lot of what you hear rings false, in fact.

First and foremost, the idea that an allegedly professional grouping of intelligence agencies would claim to have penetrated the planning and communications of Russia’s government and military from the top to the bottom if they had done so strikes me as a quintessential violation of “sources and methods.” At a minimum, the Russians would change their communications systems and turn the FSB loose on planning staff to shut down US collection capabilities. But, on the other hand, if you didn’t penetrate their systems, claiming you did in a self-adulatory newspaper article is an excellent way to cause mischief.

Zweiten, intelligence predicted an invasion within weeks of the February 24, 1994 attack. The Russians were later able to counter this claim. They claimed that they did this to keep the Russians off balance. Washington PostSo much so that he even wrote a headline for the article What is it about Russia that the U.S. intelligence service seems so apathetic? that questioned the wisdom of what the IC was doing; The Washington Post Throws Shade on a Major CNN ‘Scoop’ About Intercepted Russian Communications and Rightfully So. That article speculated, as I did a few weeks before (Why Today’s Austin-Milley Press Conference Convinces Me That Joe Biden Wants Conflict With Russia in Ukraine), that the Biden White House didn’t know if Russia intended to invade but wanted to raise the political cost of him not invading.

The story we are seeing is more propaganda by the intelligence agency. I can’t be convinced that an intelligence community that failed to perceive the brittleness of the Afghan government when our analysts were co-located with Afghan intelligence units would be able to penetrate Russian decision-making processes so thoroughly. Our intelligence community’s record over the past twenty years has been mixed at best. This could be interpreted as abject incompetence.

The best that the IC can claim is that it knew the Russians had the capability to invade; the claim that it was aware of Russia’s intentions is, I think, nonsense.

More articles are coming in this series; maybe we’ll end up with something that looks like evidence that the IC was able to produce something like a D-Day/H-hour prediction that would validate their claim to having been inside Russia’s planning cycle. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.

 

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