'Leaks' Pinned On Russia And Other Issues With Them
April 14, 2023
Exactly one week ago the British news agency Reuters published the 'report' below which then was widely republished by other news sites.
Russia likely behind U.S. military document leak, U.S. officials say - Fri, April 7, 2023 at 4:46 PM GMT+1
By Phil StewartWASHINGTON (Reuters) -Russia or pro-Russian elements are likely behind the leak of several classified U.S. military documents posted on social media that offer a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday, while the Justice Department said separately it was probing the leak.
The documents appear to have been altered to lower the number of casualties suffered by Russian forces, the U.S. officials said, adding their assessments were informal and separate from the investigation into the leak itself.
The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter and declined to discuss the documents in any detail.
The author, Phil Stewart, ...
... has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award.
One wonders who initiated the contact between Stewart and those 'officials'. Did Steward [ask] them for comments or did they call him up to plant the nonsense?
I have tried to contact Phil Steward but it is unlikely that I will hear back from him.
One wonders how many other such 'Russiagate' like hoax stories, based on anonymous officials, were published by Phil Stewart and Reuters.
Meanwhile one of real purposes of the 'leak' becomes clear:
The Biden administration is looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chatrooms after U.S. intelligence agencies failed to spot classified Pentagon documents circulating online for weeks, according to a senior administration official and a congressional official briefed on the matter.The possible change in the intelligence-gathering process is just one potential shift as officials scramble to determine not only how the documents leaked but also how to prevent another damaging incident.
...
If the administration tries to check online chatrooms more closely, it will have to navigate legal safeguards designed to protect Americans’ privacy and freedom of _expression_, former intelligence officials said.Watching a public chatroom is fair game, but law enforcement agencies don’t have the legal authority to monitor a private online chatroom without probable cause, the former officials said.
It is likely that Biden will now push for even more extreme censorship, i.e. the Restrict Act, to become law.
Former CIA agent Larry Johnson says that the leak can not have come from the alleged 'leaker' who worked in the military as the 'leaked' stash contained at least [one] CIA document that would never be distributed outside of the agency.
The leaked stash also includes many more themes then the slides on Ukraine that have so far have been discussed in the public:
A portion of the documents, which have since been widely covered by the news media, focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while others detailed analysis of potential UK policies on the South China Sea and the activities of a Houthi figure in Yemen.
And even more:
Even so, why does this unit need access to intel on such a wide range of topics: spying on Mossad, Egyptian rocket development, Wagner activities in Haiti and Africa?
So why have the media, with the help of the British intelligence outlet Bellingcat, [spent] so much time on hunting the purported 'leaker' instead of writing in depth stories on the 300 plus actual 'leaked' files? Why did they waste their resources on helping the justice department to find the leaker? The push for this was likely initiated by Bellingcat which published the first leads to that part of story. Bellingcat writers were later even bylined by the Washington Post and New York Times in their 'leaker' hunt stories.
My hunch:
The 'leaks' come from some high position in the 'intelligence community', likely the CIA or DNI. The young airman who was arrested yesterday was somehow used to publish them. The original leak source then contacted the British partner services to launch the 'hunt'. Their subsidiary Bellingcat was used to publish the results.
The purpose of the leaks was two fold:
- With the Ukraine slides published the Biden administration, which has no idea how to continue or shut down the war in Ukraine it had initiated, would have to admit that the war there is lost and that Ukraine must surrender.
- The second aim is to push for more surveillance, i.e. more jobs for the 'intelligence community'.
So far that scheme has worked well.
Posted by b on April 14, 2023 at 14:54 UTC | Permalink