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A video making the rounds yesterday purportedly showcased a mild-mannered assassin allegedly hired by Ukraine’s secret police to car-bomb Tucker Carlson for $4,000, but who was somehow stopped or arrested by the Russians. It’s not completely clear. While the tale would be consistent with how the Ukrainians usually man-handle journalists, I could not verify the video’s veracity, and I noted the story was not featured on Russia Today. Nor has Tucker said anything about it. So it remains in the “rumor” category until there’s more reliable information. But I figured someone would ask about this salacious story in the comments.
Three short days ago, the New York Times ran an unprecedented, astonishing, history-making, exclusive, damaging, long-form story under the intriguing headline, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.” Not ‘helps fight Russia.’ Helps fight Putin. The second sub-headline, which should’ve been the main headline, explained, “A C.I.A.-supported network of spy bases has been constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border.”
The least interesting fact about the article was that it immediately demolished the main argument for Ukraine support and instantly turned dozens of Senators and Congressmen into liars. The most interesting fact was the CIA’s obvious decision to burn its vast, unimaginably-expensive, militarized, networked, anti-Russia intelligence operation in Ukraine.
Note how carefully worded was the sub-headline. The CIA network of spy bases ‘includes’ twelve along the border. In other words, there’s a lot more than twelve bases. The total number remains classified. It’s like the M&M’s-in-the-jar-game. Guess how many secret, underground Ukrainian CIA bases are in the empty Vodka bottle to win a broken M1 Abrams tank!
It was a big, giant article, penned by Pulitzer-winning reporters Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz who, the byline informed us, interviewed more than 200 people in the US, Europe, and Ukraine for the story. Adam and Michael are both well-connected intelligence community hired guns and Russia hawks. Adam won a Pulitzer for his story exposing Russian meddling (to ‘help Trump’) in the 2016 election. Michael won a Pulitzer in 2020 for his series of articles exposing Russian intelligence assets around the world. So.
For the story, Adam and Michael got deep access to top-secret CIA material and even toured one of its secret underground bases on the border in Ukraine. I’m wondering, how much top-secret, classified information was exposed to these reporters so they could write this story, obviously with close CIA cooperation?
I’m not sure that, in the entirety of its long, dubious existence, the CIA has ever dumped this much current, classified information into the public domain before. I think we have witnessed yet another historic, record-breaking 2024 disclosure.
Especially given recent classified-document controversies here in the States, one wonders who authorized the declassification of all that classified information? Was it authorized?
But the even bigger question is: why.
Before we attempt to answer that particularly pesky question, a question that, in the hours following the article’s publication, has consumed hundreds of hours of podcast time and libraries of blog articles, let’s first check in and see how the boys in Ukraine are doing. When last we left them, Russia had just taken over the strategically-paramount, fortified city of Avdiivka following a frantic, five-month battle.
There’s pretty big news. Right after Avdiivka fell, something new happened in the Special Military Operation. Something we have never seen before. The entire, vast Russia-Ukraine battle map lit up like a secret CIA switchboard.
The Live UA Map (shown above, with my annotations) is compiled from open-source information, including published news stories, official announcements, and clever scraping of geolocation data found in the metadata of cell phone pictures and drone videos. Russian-controlled areas and attacks are shaded red, Ukraine’s are blue.
What first strikes you about the proportion of red and blue on that map?
Yep. What the map strongly suggests — a conclusion shared by most independent war bloggers — is that, once Russia had captured the key strategic location of Avdiivka in central Ukraine, it commenced a massive, all-theatre offensive, all along the extended front, putting Ukraine in an impossible situation: where should it send its dwindling, aging, worn-out reserve forces? To what part of the line?
Somehow, Western ‘leaders’ appear completely taken by surprise — how could this happen? They seem to be panicking and are politically freaking out. Mercurial gadfly Emmanuel Macron called for an emergency, last-minute NATO conference yesterday and shocked attendees by suggesting the West should give Ukraine not just ammunition, but uniformed troops, a development that would ring the World War III dinner bell.
Macron’s ridiculous proposal was immediately shot down, leaving the French President standing alone in his bikini-style briefs. The instant take-down included wide corporate media coverage, which means they were really talking to Russia, saying don’t worry, we may be stupid but we’re not THAT stupid. For example, from an article in yesterday’s USA Today:
Over here in the U.S., President Biden — just like panicky Macron — convened an “emergency” summit yesterday with Chuck Schumer and Mike Johnson, a painful interview including a separate half hour where Biden asked to speak to Johnson privately, causing this author to conclude that whatever we’re paying Mike Johnson, it isn’t enough. ...
Why is Joe panicking? Does he love the Ukrainians that much? Better yet, would the aid package really turn the tide at this point? Even if Congress approves the $61 billion aid package, it would almost certainly be too little, the ammo would get to Ukraine too late, and it would not solve Ukraine’s actual biggest problem, which is not lack of ammo. As Macron’s freakout suggests, Ukraine’s main problem is that we could send it all the weapons and ammo we want, but Ukraine is running out of fresh men to fire the weapons.
Ammo, you can buy. Weapons, you can buy. More Ukrainians? Not so much.
So what’s the panic? The panic is, Ukraine may lose, and it may lose soon, and so this one might be the very last aid package. Biden’s money train may soon be pulling into the Russian-occupied station. Privet, comrades! In other words, once it gets clear that Ukraine is lost, there won’t be any more multi-billion dollar aid packages for politicians and oligarchs to graft from.
This could be Biden’s last chance.
Which brings us back to pondering the bizarre, unprecedented decision by the obsessively-secretive Central Intelligence Agency to burn its Ukraine operation to the ground.
The Time’s extensive, detailed article prints to 34 single-spaced pages. It’s a small book. But here are the basics: according to the Times, on the same day Ukraine’s democratically-elected, pro-Russian government fell in 2014, CIA director John Brennan’s private government plane landed in Kiev. The Director immediately formed a enduring friendship with the new, pro-Western replacement president (Zelensky’s predecessor), and forged a lasting work relationship with its brand-new spy chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko.
Many analysts credibly believe the CIA helped or even engineered the coup that overthrew Ukraine’s fairly-elected, Russia-friendly government on February 24, 2014. (Eight years later — to the day — Russia invaded Ukraine.) If true, the CIA had a complete claim to the government it created. And, if true, all the top Ukrainians are actually handpicked CIA assets.
What happened next in February 2014, according to the article, could be best described as the CIA moving into Ukraine’s master bedroom and making the owners move down to the basement. “Working with” Ukraine, Obama’s CIA began building its “network” of underground bases in Ukraine — who knows how many — including the aforementioned dirty dozen of militarized, underground, US-built bases right along Russia’s border. Sadly, the CIA was aided by intelligence-friendly, Cold War-era Republicans, too...
The article continued, citing example after example, trying its hardest to put the CIA into a good light and make the article into some kind of CIA recruitment brochure. But the reader can only avoid feeling nauseated and betrayed by the CIA, by believing that Russia is an existential threat to the United States and no risk is too great to oppose it. In other words, you have to still be an all-in Cold Warrior.
Too much top-secret information was disclosed to describe here, because of space constraints. But I’ll give you one example for flavor, and it’s not even the most shocking example:
"Around 2016, the C.I.A. began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that C.I.A. technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.)"
A commando force? Military intelligence? In other words, although the article studiously avoided describing any direct wet work, it doesn’t say there wasn’t any, either. But clearly, the CIA was involved in helping direct and train Ukraine’s military. In other, other words, the CIA built itself an army in Ukraine. And the Russians obviously didn’t like it.
Note the cited date: “around” 2016. Do you think Trump was briefed on the CIA’s massive network of bases and its captive army in Ukraine? Could that have been what Trump was trying to figure out when he called Ukraine’s president, a call the deep-state immediately leaked and impeached him over? Was the great quid-pro-quo-ing of Trump really intended to send a message: keep your hands off Ukraine, or else?
Is that what Chucky Schumer meant when he gleefully warned Rachel Maddow the CIA has six ways from Sunday to get back at you?
Again: who declassified 34 pages of detailed, top-secret CIA information, details like naming unit numbers and members, and who invited Times reporters to tour top-secret underground bases? I’ve been assured by many democrats that even having classified information not carefully declassified through multiple layers of review and sign-off is a treasonous crime. (Unless you cooperate more with FBI agents investigating your illegally kept files, but I digress).
The CIA’s top-secret, multi-billion dollar militarized spying operation in Ukraine is now public knowledge; in other words, it’s been burned. Agents and sources have been placed in harm’s way. Secret bases have been compromised. America’s foreign policy has been damaged. Was all this unprecedented disclosure a crime? Should the FBI now raid intrepid reporters Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz, to find out who leaked?
We now enter the realm of speculation. Obviously we don’t know, and will probably never know, the real reason the CIA burned its active Ukraine network. But some possibilities loom larger than others. I’ll begin with my own conclusion.
This looks like the most unlimited limited-hangout ever I’ve seen. My best guess is someone or something was about to leak the story of the CIA’s ownership of Ukraine, so the spy chiefs got ahead of the story, in order to spin the harmful disclosures as best they could, as some kind of helpful, patriotic mission abroad, perfectly normal, nothing to see in Ukraine. To get it out, the agency dished the story up to two allied reporters on a plate and swanked them around some high-tech underground CIA military bases on the Russian border.
I pray someday, someone will ask Trump whether he was ever briefed on what the CIA was doing in Ukraine, and if so, when. Either way, limited or not, this story is terrifically damaging to the CIA, a permanent black eye that has only just started oozing.
First, the CIA’s bases obviously aren’t on the literal border with Russia, because Russia has already captured twenty percent of Ukraine’s eastern flank, but the CIA is still offering reporters spy-base tours. So the bases are more likely placed along the country’s ethnic borders, leading to an ugly conclusion that the CIA was actively helping Ukraine’s Nazi military attack and brutally oppress its own people in the more Russian areas in eastern Ukraine. So that’s one very ugly fact.
Second, the biggest media narrative in support of Ukraine from Day One has been that Putin invaded Ukraine for no reason. They told us Putin only invaded because he had deranged dreams of becoming a 21st-century Czar and reuniting the old USSR’s borders and putting the communist band back together. Joe Biden constantly blabbered about how the war was unprovoked (i.e., without reason or excuse)...
But this article proves beyond cavil that Putin was provoked. Putin even said so, although sold-out corporate media refused to believe him...
What would the U.S. do, if Russia were building dozens of secret military bases along our southern border and training Mexico’s military and installing Russia-friendly, KGB assets into all of Mexico’s top political, military, and intelligence services?
At what point would enough become enough?
Third, if I were a Senator or Congressman who had gone around repeatedly assuring my constituents and telling the media that Russia invaded Ukraine for no reason, I would be pretty hot right now. This disclosure just made liars of them all.
Finally, looping back to where we started, the story signaled that the CIA obviously expects Ukraine to lose the war. Apart from getting in front of the story, the CIA burned its secret underground border spy bases because it probably expects Russia will capture them soon. By burning its spy network in Ukraine, the CIA crossed a sort of geopolitical Rubicon, a point of no return, and has decided it has no realistic way to stop the Russians. So the CIA has abandoned ship. Or base.
It was an amazing story and we’ve never seen anything like it in history. It took fifty years for the CIA to declassify some of its files on JFK’s assassination. Putin got them to declassify their twisted Ukrainian network in about fifty minutes.
No more money for Ukraine until our own border is fully secure.
Next, the disclosure of all this detailed information about the CIA’s activities in Ukraine is opening up vast new panoramas of connecting dots. For example, Mike Benz reminded Twitter yesterday about the curious timing of Hunter Biden’s Burisma Board job compared with the timeline of the CIA’s admitted invasion of Ukraine:
A side-effect of the CIA’s limited hangout will be the chance to keep putting the puzzle pieces together. So, stand by.
Signs of trouble in paradise! One unavoidable side-effect of the panicked CIA base disclosures is also an inability to predict what else its disclosures might affect, or who might be upset about them. I have no way of knowing, but one day after the Times helped the CIA burn its own Ukraine network, which included painting a picture on Ukraine’s spy chief’s back as a CIA asset, while President Biden was still making the rounds justifying $61 billion in Ukraine aid because of Alexei Navalny’s murder, guess what happened?
CIA asset (former?) and Ukraine spy chief Budanov announced Navalny died of natural causes, eviscerating the latest US narrative for ginning up Ukraine support:
Did Budanov push back on the CIA because they burned him? Or is the CIA undercutting Biden, and directed Budanov to do it? What happened?
And … a blood clot! If you go back and read C&C the day after Navalny died, you’ll find I said it sounded more like a jab-related sudden adult death than anything else. Well, well, well.
Why would Budanov support the Russians instead of Biden just now? One day after the epic Times article. Even if he felt a need to be honest, there would be no reason for the spy chief to go public with his conclusion that Navalny died of natural causes, tossing a sandbag right in front of Joe Biden’s orthopedic sneaker.
All we can know for sure is there are massive movements afoot behind the scenes.
I’m not sure that, in the entirety of its long, dubious existence, the CIA has ever dumped this much current, classified information into the public domain before. I think we have witnessed yet another historic, record-breaking 2024 disclosure.
Especially given recent classified-document controversies here in the States, one wonders who authorized the declassification of all that classified information? Was it authorized?
But the even bigger question is: why.
Who cares? Choices were made by a lot of parties involved. Wasn't just the US by any means yet you keep throwing it on the lap of the US.
Ukrainian men are fighting a war. They could flee if they didn't want to. It's not complicated.
If Canada attacked my state I'd kill them and would join in. Whether Canada got money from Russia or China to attack I give no shits. I'll kill them if there on my land.
It's never been about culture. Russia wants warm water ports and something more than a bridge to Crimea. They want to shrink their Western border as well. Good luck, nuke time if they try to take Poland.
A hostile neighbor is one thing. Once you attack regardless of past circumstances, you are the fucktard. And that's Russia in this case. Not even debatable.
First, longtime CIA watcher Mike Benz agreed with me that the 34-page Times’ article was an obvious CIA plant, but one paragraph convinced him the disclosure was actually just an effort to pressure Congress to pass the $61 billion Ukraine aid package by selling what terrific work the CIA was doing in Ukraine and how it needs funding to continue.
I disagree with Mike for four reasons.
One: the CIA could have much more easily assigned an attractive analyst with a compelling pair of visual aids to directly persuade Speaker Johnson (and anyone else in Congress) in a classified briefing without burning its network; it does that kind of thing all the time. Second, the CIA, like cockroaches, never do their scurrying out in the open. The network is useless to the CIA now its cover is blown, so there is no longer any need for CIA funds. Third, Ukrainian officials seemed deeply upset by the disclosures, rather than salivating over chances for a new plane-load of cash pallets. Fourth, though the reporters tried to squeeze the disclosures into a strappy dress, they wound up looking more like a balding, middle-aged, trans NATO general trying to pull off a tight skirt look.
Eww.
In other words, the article profoundly damaged the CIA. Presumably the voluntary disclosure caused less damage than the CIA’s enemies would have done.
Did the Blob get vaxxed and boosted? Does that explain the severe neurological damage it displays now as its hologram of lies about Ukraine and Russia Russia Russia flickers out in the blinding daylight of reality. First, there was the gigantic New York Times article published last Sunday blowing open the decade-long secret shadow war by the CIA in a sprawling network of underground bunkers on and around the Russian border.
The story was a direct feed from Blob Central in Langley, VA, to Times errand boys Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz, longtime RussiaGate hoaxers, and obviously intended to get ahead of the real news that the neo-con project to turn Ukraine into a NATO forward base against Russia has collapsed. Read closely, the Times story appears to be an effort by current CIA chief William Burns to hang-out-to-dry his predecessors John Brennan, Mike Pompeo, and Gina Haspel for the failed eight-year-long operation. Why? Because it looks like Russia is fixing to shut down the war ASAP, before its March 15 presidential election.
As it happened, Russian diplomats and Ukraine President Zelensky took turns visiting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in Saudi Arabia this week, sparking rumors that these were peace talks with MBS playing mediator. The situation is delicate for all concerned. Ukraine itself verges on collapse with its army decimated, its ammo used up, and its coffers empty, awaiting the $60-plus-billion aid package that is stalled in Congress, meaning no salaries for Ukraine govt employees and no pensions.
It’s delicate for the US because “Joe Biden” has declared our country won’t negotiate over Ukraine, despite the fact that there is nothing else to do now, or the end of the war will be negotiated without us. And remember, not many days ago Mr. Putin told Tucker Carlson that he was ready to talk to anybody. What this will demonstrate is that America has neither the ability to continue its proxy war nor the will or sense to engage in peace talks — all due to “Joe Biden’s” abject intransigence, and not a good look for someone pretending to run for re-election.
It’s delicate for Russia because such a humiliating loss for America could provoke “JB” and his NATO allies to some reckless and foolish act, say, sending NATO members’ ground troops directly into battle or a missile strike on Russian territory, setting off nuclear war. At the very least, the situation has already prompted the US government propaganda machine to kick-start Russia Russia Russia 3.0, the threadbare narrative that has been the accelerant of Democratic Party hallucinations about Russia interfering in US elections since 2016 — when it has actually been US spooks collaborating with a motley assortment of Ukrainian stooges, plus Marc Elias’s lawfare corps, plus the Intel Blob coercing social media to work its will. The majority of the voters don’t seem receptive to a replay of this scam but the US government is at war with those voters, so anything goes in the struggle to retain power.
going to Canada in the 1960's to avoid the draft, and people did that, and they are barred from re-entering the United States to this day.
President Carter pardons draft dodgers , Jan. 21, 1977
Jan 21, 2018The amnesty was meant to put an end to the bad feelings related to the Vietnam War. ... In the end, an estimated 50,000 draft dodgers chose to settle permanently in Canada. As Canadian citizens ...
The war in Ukraine. We started it in 2014 to mess with Russia and Russia is going to finish it. Who knows what our real motives were. A resource grab? A desperate ploy to erase our national debt by creating a global fiasco? Sheer psychopathic hatred of this Putin fellow? We can’t bring ourselves to acknowledge the failure of this ill-conceived venture. Instead, our feckless allies in Europe are foolishly rattling their sabers, apparently forgetting that you don’t bring a sword to a nuclear missile fight.
Mr. Macron in France affects to offer up his army for slaughter on the blood-soaked plains of Ukraine, just as the Ukrainians offered up a half a million of their young men so that Victoria Nuland could feel good about herself.
Or maybe Victoria wanted all those Ukrainians to die just because she hates them and the Russians too.
Even Tucker Carlson calls out the retards pushing the "Nazi" bullshit claims made by Putin and his morons.
socal2 says
Even Tucker Carlson calls out the retards pushing the "Nazi" bullshit claims made by Putin and his morons.
So? How does it change the fact that Ukraine Is Still Fucked?
UkraineIsFucked says
socal2 says
Even Tucker Carlson calls out the retards pushing the "Nazi" bullshit claims made by Putin and his morons.
So? How does it change the fact that Ukraine Is Still Fucked?
Just interesting to see who pushes the retarded Nazi Ukraine stuff. Are they true believers? Putin loving hacks? Or just retarded?
Just interesting to see who pushes the retarded Nazi Ukraine stuff. Are they true believers? Putin loving hacks? Or just retarded?
Just interesting to see who pushes the retarded Nazi Ukraine stuff. Are they true believers? Putin loving hacks? Or just retarded?
UkraineIsFucked says
She's cashing out? I mean why leave now?
Ukraine is fucked. She was one of the principle architects of this disaster.
But all she's done in her entire career is create disasters..
Apparently you missed all the pre-war coverage from the NY Times, WashPo, etc. that had extensive reporting on the 'retarded Nazi Ukraine stuff'.
As Tucker said - the whole Nazi stuff is the "dumbest thing he has ever heard!".
BTW - Russia lost another multi-million dollar naval ship to cheap drones this week that was patrolling around the Kerch Bridge.
BTW - Russia lost another multi-million dollar naval ship to cheap drones this week that was patrolling around the Kerch Bridge.
socal2 says
BTW - Russia lost another multi-million dollar naval ship to cheap drones this week that was patrolling around the Kerch Bridge.
Even if this is true, WTF does a naval ship have to do with Ukraine losing a LAND war?
The entire point of Russia is to get a land bridge to Crimea/Black Sea and resources.
Yet they're losing vessels quite a bit for a LAND war
I don't care about Ukraine either way
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