April 03, 2024
U.S. intelligence sources have, at times, fed bullshit to Seymour Hersh:
DUTY TO WARN Seymour Hersh, Mar 27 2024 (emphasis added)
This American intelligence community passed a warning of a possible attack involving religious extremists from Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan eighteen days in advance of the Moscow concert hall assault that killed at least 137 people and injured more than one hundred. Such a warning invariably comes from intercepts from the National Security Agency and agent reports from the Central Intelligence Agency.The Americans did their job but the Russian intelligence community, heeding its boss, did not. President Vladimir Putin publicly called the warning “provocative statements” three days before the attack, and the Russian security services ignored it. They bear responsibility, in the view of American intelligence experts, for failing to do what was necessary to protect the concertgoers.
According to the above President Putin of Russia is responsible for ignoring the warning of a terror attack the U.S. gave to Russia.
Similar bullshit was fed to Shane Harris of the Washington Post:
U.S. told Russia that Crocus City Hall was possible target of attack Washington Post, Apr 2 2024
More than two weeks before terrorists staged a bloody attack in the suburbs of Moscow, the U.S. government told Russian officials that Crocus City Hall, a popular concert venue, was a potential target, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
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The Russian leader himself publicly dismissed U.S. warnings just three days before the March 22 attack, calling them “outright blackmail” and attempts to “intimidate and destabilize our society.”
It is again Putin who is to blame.
However the above claims are nonsensical. As Shane Harris writes further down in his piece:
But the information that pointed to an attack on the concert hall also pointed at a potential danger for Americans in Russia. On March 7, the U.S. Embassy publicly announced that it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts,” and advised U.S. citizens “to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours.”The United States shared its information with Russia the day before that public warning, according to people familiar with the matter. Naryshkin said “U.S. intelligence agencies” gave the information to the FSB, Russia’s state security service.
The public warning was given on March 8. It was explicitly time limited:
People have been told to avoid concerts in the next 48 hours amid potential ‘extremist attacks’.The US Embassy in Moscow urged its citizens against attending large gatherings in the Russian capital.
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‘The embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts, and US citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours,’ it read.Britain’s Foreign Office echoed the US alert, sharing it on the Travel Advice page for the country.
The warning said that the danger was during the next 48 hours, not during the days that followed those.
Putin dismissed the warning on March 19, nine days after it had exceeded its time horizon. The attack on the Crocus hall happened on March 22. There had been no new warning issued for that or any other day.
Former CIA agent Larry Johnson, who has personal experience with such warnings, is thus correct when he writes:
During the last 35 years I do not recall a single instance in which the State Department issued a warning like this specifying a specific time period for vigilance. The warning itself implies intelligence that provided a specific timeframe for the attack. So, when the attack does not happen, you need to go back to the analysts and ask, WTF!!! If the analysts had said, “Oh, wait, the Russians boosted security at the Crocus City Hall on 8 March and scared off the attack,” then the next question should have been, “Do you still believe there will be another attempt?” The analysts could have said yes, no or maybe.So, if you believe the intelligence is credible then it was incumbent on the USG to issue another warning to continue to avoid large gatherings, such as concert halls. The USG did not do that.
Nope. The USG is pushing the line that “We warned the Russians and they did not act.” Sure looks like a psy-op to me designed to paint Putin as a heartless goon who ignored our intelligence.
And that is exactly what it is.
The attack itself was done by hired killers, not by devoted Muslims willing to die for their believe. It is thus hard to swallow the claim that the real Khorosan branch of the Islamic State is responsible for it. That branch by the way has always been known to be a CIA operation.
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand - 9:03 UTC · Apr 2, 2024This is really worth sharing: a top Chinese international relations scholar (Ma Xiaolin, director of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies at Zhejiang International Studies University) shares his view on why ISIS is now targeting geopolitical enemies of the West.
I translated his article in full - original in Chinese here: https://tidenews.com.cn/news.html?id=2754250
From Bertrand's translation:
Before the end of 2017, the Islamic State was essentially defeated as a territorial entity, suffering a fatal blow and being forced to disband and go underground, with its focus shifting from West Asia to Central Asia. The Khorasan branch, active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, became the main force, taking up the banner of terrorism and frequently acting, gradually adjusting its survival rules and strategic direction.Over the years, there have been signs that the Islamic State's targets for revenge have clearly shifted to Eastern countries, no longer viewing the US and Europe as primary enemies, and completely deviating from its original goals of ending US global dominance and "liberating Palestine".
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Despite the US indirectly or directly warning Iran and Russia of Islamic State attacks, suspicions remain.
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On November 15, 2017, the Russian Ministry of Defense publicly condemned the US military for sheltering retreating Islamic State militants; the Russian Foreign Ministry also stated that US forces in Syria had more than once allowed terrorists to escape. Consequently, Russia became the primary target for Islamic State reprisals and attacks. In December of the same year, the group attacked a supermarket in Saint Petersburg, injuring 18 people.Russian media revealed that since 2018, the US and other Western allies have repeatedly airlifted Islamic State leaders and key members out of eastern Syria, their whereabouts unknown. In January 2019, the Russian Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs stated that unidentified helicopters were transporting large numbers of Islamic State militants from eastern Syria to the border area between Tajikistan and Russia, preparing to provoke Russia.
Moreover, on September 2, 2022, just before the 22nd anniversary of the "9/11" attacks, ISKP did not commemorate its predecessors' landmark attack on the US homeland; instead, it targeted China for the first time in its publication "The Voice of Khorasan". Three days later, the group launched a suicide attack on the Russian embassy in Afghanistan, killing two Russian diplomats.
Clearly, ISKP has become the core force of the Islamic State, with its stance representing the new core and top-level position of the Islamic State. The struggling Islamic State is openly changing its stance to show goodwill towards the US and Europe and hostility towards China, Russia, and Iran, hoping to benefit from the confrontation between major powers.
The Russian and Chinese suspicion that IS-K has been formed or is used as a tool of U.S. intelligence service is well founded.
Three years ago, based on reports from the Afghan Analyst Network and other sources, I found that IS-K and the CIA had strong relations:
How The CIA Used ISIS-K To Keep Its Afghanistan Business - Moon of Alabama, Aug 29 2021
Over the years several reports by the Afghan Analyst Network (AAN) about the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP or ISIS-K) show that it had grown out of militant groups from Pakistan. A report from 2016 describes extensively how they were fostered by the Afghan state:...The Afghan state's NDS was a CIA proxy agency. During the mid 1990s the intelligence chief of the Northern Alliance, Amrullah Saleh, had been trained by the CIA in the United States. After the U.S. overthrew the Taliban government Saleh became the head of the NDS. The NDS also had extensive relations with India's secret service.
While the U.S. pretended to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) consistent reports from various sides alleged that core ISIS personnel were extracted by unmarked U.S. helicopters from Iraq and Syria and transferred to Nangarhar where they reinforced the ISKP militants.
Hadi Nasrallah @HadiNasrallah - 1:18 UTC · Aug 28, 2021In 2017 and 2020, Syria’s SANA reported that that US helicopters transported between 40 and 75 ISIS militants from Hasakah, North Syria to an “unknown area”. The same thing was reported for years in Iraq by the PMU along with reports that US helicopters dropped aid for ISIS.
As Alex Rubinstein summarizes:
The list of governments, former government officials, and organizations in the region that have accused the US of supporting ISIS-K is expansive and includes the Russian government, the Iranian government, Syrian government media, Hezbollah, an Iraqi state-sponsored military outfit and even former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who called the group a “tool” of the United States ...Like in Iraq and Syria the CIA's fostering of ultra-militant Islamists led to a backlash as the militants increasingly attacked the Afghan state. The U.S. military finally found it necessary to intervene against them. But the fighting against them on the ground was mostly done by the Taliban who for that purpose received direct support from the U.S. air force.
The concert hall attack in Russia was attributed to IS-K because the IS-affiliated Amaq News Agency had published videos by the murderers who were from Tajikistan. But the fact that someone knew whereto submit such videos does not prove a strong connection between those entities.
It seems IS-K, like certain journalists, is just a tool used by U.S. intelligence services to further their information and terror operations while blaming U.S. 'enemies', here Putin, for the results.
But what is really disturbing is that people fall for it.
Posted by b on April 3, 2024 at 11:49 UTC | Permalink