I like to read the Empty Wheel blog by former Kossack Marcy Wheeler. She’s attentive, intelligent, and strong in opinion. In her post on “The Benefits of Having a Career Diplomat at CIA,” Empty Wheel makes some observations that made me, anyway, say, “D’oh! Why didn’t I realize that?” I’m going to quote from that post and move the sections around to serve my subject, so I strongly recommend folks read her post.
Her main point is that William Burns served as a diplomat for years and years, and he knows how Russia fights information wars. He has had the experience of losing to Russian propaganda. That has made all the difference.
Normally, CIA Directors protect such secrets with knee-jerk obstinance. But under this former diplomat, the Intelligence Community is actually using the intelligence it gathers to gain tactical leverage. After years of Russian intelligence operations designed to split American alliances, that has had the effect of raising US credibility with allies.
Indeed, Burns, along with Avril Haines, has been conducting an information war before the information war, and it is a war against America’s own past intelligence services and service directors’ habits. From Reagan announcing intelligence that he wouldn’t share with the world that Kaddafi had conducting the Berlin Disco bombing (he hadn’t) and therefore all allies needed to help us bomb to secret intelligence that we wouldn’t share claiming that Grenada was going to attack American medical school students to secret intelligence, most brazenly, about Iraq’s “mobile bioweapons labs,” the United States had a wretched record as liars or bullies. Either our services were incompetent or were not serving allies as friends.
As Ms. Wheeler points out, we know of four CIA/NSA/DIA products that have been declassified and shared with the world: 1. Russia’s plan to have a false flag “attack” to justify an invasion of Ukraine, 2. actual details of Russia and China speaking of the plans for the invasion in advance, including China telling Russia about our negotiations with them and characterizing our work as “sowing discord,” 3. pre-emptive revelations about a false flag chemical weapons attack, 4. reports that Russia has already asked China for military aid. #2 is a huge deal. We, here, have not thought though what a major artillery shell of an intelligence product that was to lob at China.
But here’s where she says something and we who read her slap our foreheads:
I would bet a fair amount of money that, when the history of these events is told twenty years from now, we’ll learn of similar, but non-public, selective declassification with NATO-plus-Sweden-and-Finland partners, starting at a NATO summit in February, immediately after which a number of European countries (most spectacularly, Germany) took dramatic and unified action.
When we realize that President Biden met with four members of NATO secretly when he went to Rome “to meet the Pope,” then this, too, has to have happened.
I have seen diaries on the rec list almost joyful at “paranoid Putin” firing generals. Well, the Kremlin is no doubt burning up officers in a counter-intelligence bonfire, but let’s not feel too good about this. Intelligence services worry about this because they lose their human intelligence regardless, whether the enemy “catches” them or not. The sources simply can’t report when a leader is imprisoning and killing everyone who can be suspected, and when everyone can be suspected.
As Empty Wheel says,
it’s possible that Putin arrested two FSB officers because he suspects they were sources for some of the intelligence that got shared to undermine Russia’s efforts. It’s possible that Russia’s focus on neutralizing western support for Ukraine in recent days, particularly its attack on the western training base in Yavoriv yesterday, reflects a counterintelligence crackdown responding to declassified US intelligence.
I would say that the attack on the base in Lviv is guaranteed to be a counter-intelligence move, as well as a counter-espionage and counter-cyber attack. Ukraine’s electronic defenses (and attacks on Russian aircraft) have been good, and the Russians have to expect that they’re coming from an unofficial NATO base in Ukraine.
Furthermore, we can expect that the Russian infantry has been given orders to specifically shoot journalists now, since it’s standard for Putin to revive the Soviet stance that all Western journalists are spies, whether they know it or not.
Ms. Wheeler warns us against the triumphalist note. We may be proven wrong in our assessment that sharing is a weapon of war. Regardless, she says, it is a weapon of alliance that is doing a great deal for the United States.
I, too, think we need to be REALLY careful about self-congratulations. Every time we smile at our “wins” (with the bodies of Ukrainians), we set ourselves up for rage and knee jerk reactions when the wins are reversed, when the enemy adapts, and these get us closer to firing missiles of our own. We must remember that Russia had fully penetrated Ukraine’s computer systems before the war, had corrupt officials all over the place, and it had superb intelligence.
We could not stop Iran from delivering a devastating missile strike on one of our heavily defended basis in Iraq in retaliation for killing one of their top generals, so don’t think that we won’t see more deaths of allies as well as Ukrainians.
Now, if we could find a way to move China. . . but, when it comes to that, we can’t be certain that the “news” we’re reading about China having already decided to help Russia isn’t another declassification weapon. If used properly, it tells China that Russia leaks or is “owned” by our intelligence. If not, it makes China belligerent. CIA and State have shown that they know what they’re doing, and we have to trust the professionals for now.