Larry Johnson
Are we witnessing the consequences of legalized marijuana causing contact highs among the intelligence community that surrounds Washington, DC? How else to explain the parade of political and military analysts now seized with angst over the growing gulf between what they claimed would happen to Russia in Ukraine and the stark reality. Hell, even the CIA is trying to figure out what went wrong with its analysis and is still getting it wrong. Remarkable.
The problem with the CIA is simple–when you prioritize hiring people because of their embrace of pronouns and degenerate sexuality over recruiting accomplished, genuinely educated people equipped with critical thinking skills, do not be surprised that the juvenile mediocrities perform poorly. How is a gender-fluid “them” with no military experience and no foreign language skills going to predict the military outcome of a conflict where the attacking force is outnumbered 3 to 1?
Failure is supposed to be a great teacher. But that instruction only succeeds if the pupil is open to learning hard lessons. The CIA has become a purple haired clown show. Just take a gander at this article from the Business Insider–US intel officials admit they didn’t see that Russia’s military was a ‘hollow force.’ Here’s what they did see and how they missed it.
Russia is now a “hollow force?” The only hollow thing in this example are the empty noggins of the morons masquerading as intelligence analysts. Check out their excuses for getting it wrong:
- The Russian force the US military and intelligence agencies believed to be a near-peer adversary hasn’t shown up. The force that did appear had its main thrust blunted by smaller Ukrainian units.
- “What we did not see from the inside was sort of this hollow force” that lacked an effective non-commissioned officer corps, leadership training, and effective doctrines, Berrier said of the Russians.
- While US intelligence agencies misinterpreted the effectiveness of the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, they provided accurate information about Russia’s intentions in the months prior to Russia’s attack, which began on February 24.
- “When you deal with a foreign actor, analysts can fall prey to a number of mental traps, from confirmation bias, availability bias, or even favoring existing analytic lines over new information,” Michael E. van Landingham, a former Russia analyst at the CIA, told Insider.
But this is all nonsense. There is this thing called the internet. It actually allows an inquiring mind to go back in time and see what the CIA was saying in February and March. This is not my opinion. You may read the facts for yourself:
How US intelligence got it right on Ukraine–The CIA director, Bill Burns, a career diplomat, and his boss, the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, a former deputy CIA director, came to office a year ago. . . Burns and Haines refocused on Russia and China, concentrating on collecting and analyzing intelligence on the authoritarian regimes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. For the first time in a long time, American intelligence agencies were thinking strategically, looking out over the horizon, as opposed to reporting what happened five minutes ago. The result was a clear and prescient picture of Putin’s intentions toward Ukraine.
The Intelligence Community Hits a Grand Slam. Now, It Must Help Ukraine Win–The Biden administration is also entitled to some applause. It “flooded the zone” with authorized disclosures of intelligence prior to the Russian invasion. . . . The more recent disclosures were also designed as a deterrent, to get inside Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision-making process and perhaps cause him to think twice before hitting the “go” button. . . . The intelligence community along with U.S. military special operations forces must prepare to conduct and/or support a Ukrainian insurgency campaign. The model should be Afghanistan in 1980, just after the Soviet invasion. . . . At the same time, the intelligence community must — and will — look for and encourage diplomats and intelligence officers serving at Russian embassies abroad who are making the decision whether or not to jump from Putin’s ship. . . . The intelligence community will also watch to see signs that tens of thousands, or perhaps more, brave Russians are getting ready to take to their streets. . . . Finally, there’s the intelligence community’s support of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. . . . Zelensky vs. Putin. Leonidas vs. Xerxes. Will history repeat itself? Perhaps. But let’s hope that the new Leonidas lives this time to tell the tale. And that his people triumph in sovereign democracy alongside him. America has a stake in this fight. It’s time to make some history. It’s time to help Ukraine win.
Top American generals on three key lessons learned from Ukraine–“The computer models would have said Russia wins in 72 to 96 hours,” said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger. They “cannot explain why Ukraine is still hanging on. Why is that?” . . . . It took months for Russian President Vladimir Putin to amass more than 175,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian border. But since those forces mobilized on Feb. 23, the Russian military has been embarrassed by one logistical failure after another. Videos posted on social media showed lines of tanks and military vehicles stalled on Ukrainian roads, with no spare parts available to fix broken vehicles and no fuel to get them running again. Other viral videos showed hungry Russian soldiers who had apparently run out of rations accepting food from Ukrainians.
The ignorance of the U.S. military commanders and the oxymoronically named intelligence community is breathtaking. If you are trying to predict the outcome of a military operation there are, as Andrei Martyanov describes in his must read book (The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs) key variables that must be weighed. One of these is the nature of the defensive fortifications of the Ukrainian army. For the love of God, the entire damn U.S. intelligence community had eight years to track and identify the formidable system of trenches, revetments and bunkers the Ukrainians had constructed. Then there is the fact that Ukraine’s army outnumbered Russia by three-to-one. In what drug addled universe does an analyst conclude and promulgate that a out-manned Russian army will conquer a country twice the size of the United Kingdom in four days?
Perhaps this was a deliberate straw-man strategy–i.e., play up the Russians as ten feet tall (knowing all along that they have the ability to eventually grind the Ukrainians into talcum powder) and then portray them as a weak, doddering power. Maybe the terrible analytical predictions were part of a broader propaganda campaign.
What I do not understand is why the technical collection systems at NSA and NIMA (i.e., National Imagery and Mapping Agency) apparently failed to identify the robust Ukrainian defenses? What should alarm U.S. legislators is that the CIA still does not have a damn clue about what is going on. Specifically, describing Russia as a “hollowed” out force is baseless nonsense. The complex military operations the Russians are conducting across a 900 mile front that stretches from Kharkiv in the north, thru the Donbas and then southwest to Odessa. Besides supplying ground forces with ammunition, fuel, food and medical care, Russian logicians also are feeding hundreds of thousands of civilians left homeless because of the fighting. Then there is the coordination of artillery and sea-based cruise missiles along with close air support from fixed wing and rotary wing air craft.
The CIA is learning the hardway the truth of Sun Tzu’s aphorism:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
That is where the United States intelligence community is; it is ignorant of itself and the Russians.
One of the old intel codgers, Graham E. Fuller, who was Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council at CIA back when I was an analyst, has it figured out. He wrote a piece sure to get him removed from woke Washington, DC parties:
The war in Ukraine has dragged on long enough now to reveal certain clear trajectories. First, two fundamental realities:
- Putin is to be condemned for launching this war– as is virtually any leader who launches any war. Putin can be termed a war criminal–in good company with George W. Bush who has killed vastly greater numbers than Putin.
- Secondary condemnation belongs to the US (NATO) in deliberately provoking a war with Russia by implacably pushing its hostile military organization, despite Moscow’s repeated notifications about crossing red lines, right up to the gates of Russia. This war did not have to be if Ukranian neutrality, á la Finland and Austria, had been accepted. Instead Washington has called for clear Russian defeat.
Contrary to Washington’s triumphalist pronouncements, Russia is winning the war, Ukraine has lost the war. Any longer-term damage to Russia is open to debate.
Sadly for Washington, nearly every single one of its expectations about this war are turning out to be incorrect. Indeed the West may come to look back at this moment as the final argument against following Washington’s quest for global dominance into ever newer and more dangerous and damaging confrontations with Eurasia. And most of the rest of the world–Latin America, India, the Middle East and Africa– find few national interests in this fundamentally American war against Russia.
Graham, I could not have conveyed the message with more clarity. You nailed it.
Reader Interactions
Eric says
Perhaps what is meant here is that, normally the knee jerk reaction to someone ‘starting a war’ or ‘invading’ an ‘innocent country’ –unprovoked, which is endlessly barked, such a person or country–the perennial big bad bully Putin is EXPECTED to be condemned. But fundamental reality #2 negates the validity of #1. At least, that is how I interpreted Fuller.
Anyone with any knowledge of the circumstance knows that the war was started by Kiev 8 years ago, it’s hardly innocent, it clearly planned to invade a country, LDNR, which it refused to even speak with in violation of the Minsk Agreements, and was already attacking LDNR with thousands of shells in the immediate runup to Russia’s SMO. And if Russia ‘started a war’, it would have given Kiev the “Baghdad” treatment.
Rick Merlotti says
“I contend among the many reasons drug and alcohol abuse is sky-rocking is the inability of people to reconcile the opposing worlds they find their minds residing in.”
Very astute observation. We have a whole population atomized by fake news, fake history, no national unity or positive “mission statement” for the country. Our political leaders are craven, mendacious money-grabbers, doing the bidding of the transnational financial oligarchy which has no interest in the welfare of common people of any nationality, race, creed, etc. In fact, they actively seek our destruction.
Helen says
After following the Syrian tragedy up close, it became impossible to take any in intel/military seriously, at least their public statements.
Which leads me to wonder aloud how much smoke was blown up the Ukrainian leadership’s derriere from the beginning of the coup. Other than the country and culture, how different were the Ukies handled from say intels creation of al Qaeda or the Iraqi Sunni Islamic State in Syria?
From afar it sure looks to me like the same playbook:
1. Select the country to invade
2. Identify, then build “special” relationships, especially with the leadership, with those on the fringe of said country
3. Dazzle identified fringe group with American grandeur – weapons, $$$, drugs, women, more $$$…toss in a local millionaire/billionaire to fund the schtick…
3. Convince said fringe group the U.S. empire will be behind them all the way if they partner with them to overthrow said countries leadership. We’ll do A if you do B
4. Government is overthrown whether by a bunch of cave dwellers who won 20 years later, or hard right rag tag group of wanderers who have yet to be entirely defeated or a bunch of offspring of nazis.
5. Leadership is overthrown and whoola U.S. builds military bases, secret bio-labs, the museums are always raided, all natural resources are gobbled up by the cronies, a puppet government is installed and the fringe group typically gets left in the dust.
Just ask the Kurds…
The only thing different with Ukraine is Russia being their next door neighbor. The coup could not be complete without those Oblasts Russia has been fortifying for eight-long-tragic years and of course, the return of Crimea.
This standoff was going to end one day come hell or high water. Intel and military knew that. So some dunderheads in Crystal City and Langley put on their AI dunce caps, rubbed two thoughts together, and decided the Nazi offspring would serve their purposes beautifully and they did serve the intel/military beautifully.
Intel/military blew their smoke and the Nazi offspring inhaled. They believed what they were being sold b/c they had ample opportunities to consider other options during the four years Trump was in office. Nope. Instead they waited and allowed their countrymen/women to become cannon fodder for a military folks in Washington knew unequivocally would wallop them. I guess what the U.S. brainiacs really needed to learn from all of this mess was how mighty the Russian military really is. Something tells me the U.S. intel/military have learned that they have met their match.
Bottom line – The Nazi’s got played just like al Qaeda and the IS.
As for intel/military not knowing the strength behind Russia and her military, well, that’s quackery with some serious lips moving there b/c heaven forbid the Nazi’s catch onto their being used as pawns on the grand chessboard of globalization.
The rest is history, that is unless you want to turn your attention to the U.S. and the fringe group Antifa.
Dave_k says
I believe the US intelligence agencies know exactly whats really going on in Ukraine.
Americans are people of faith … they believe they are the best, most innovative, smartest country the world has ever seen with the best military the world has ever seen and they are evangelic about it.
Russia HAS to be inferior in every way otherwise what’s the last 105 years been all about? Seeing Russia beat the USA economically, diplomatically and militarily would be a crisis of faith and threaten the whole house of cards.
Chris Chuba says
“The computer models would have said Russia wins in 72 to 96 hours,”
So we concluded that ‘Russia failed’ based on our own modeling. There is not a single Russian official who claimed they were going to capture Kiev in 3 days. Hmm … either the Russians failed or we need better computer models. I am putting my money on the second one.
Dave_k says
Computer models are only as good as the guys who program them. Russian military culture draws on 900 years of military experience and the Russians have fought over that same land many times and know every inch of it … as do the Ukrainians which makes this such a difficult nut to crack. You can see lots of the “great patriotic war” in both sides strategies although the politicians seem to be driving the Ukrainians tactics more and more as their situation gets dire.
The Russians have a history of being underestimated but also have a history of making unexpected changes of tactics and strategy that carries the day. Not to glorify warfare but it’s somewhat of a pleasure to see that this war isn’t dominated by the latest greatest wonder weapons … they have their place but a well-rounded officer corps armed with a 900-year-old bag of tricks can still trump them.
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Comments
MikeY says
The 2 “fundamental realities” mentioned in the article are at odds with one another.
How can you condemn Putin for “starting” a war when the enemy pushed its hostile military organization right up to the gates of Russia?
Take that up with Graham fuller. You have a fair point