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‘Leaks’ Pinned On Russia And Other Issues With Them
Exactly one week ago the British news agency Reuters published the 'report' below which then was widely republished by other news sites.
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Russia likely behind U.S. military document leak, U.S. officials say – Fri, April 7, 2023 at 4:46 PM GMT+1
By Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (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 Stewart asked them for comments or did they call him up to plant the nonsense?
I have tried to contact Phil Stewart 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:
EXCLUSIVE – U.S. intel agencies may change how they monitor social media, chatrooms after missing leaked U.S. documents for weeks – NBC News
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 than 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, spend 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.
Russian jets nearly shot down British surveillance plane over Black Sea in Sept.
if I am correct among these leaked documents there was also this small item, as NYT reported April 12th.
“Miscommunication Nearly Led to Russian Jet Shooting Down British Spy Plane, U.S. Officials Say
– Recently leaked intelligence documents called the incident, last year, a near shoot down. Officials said it was more serious than originally reported.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/world/europe/russian-jet-british-spy-plane.html?smid=tw-share
Despite now being ignored by most outlets I assume, this would have surpassed everything else in these leaks being discussed.
I paste the NYT text here, in case it will disappear in a few days, because this is the kind of stuff every politician war-mongering as they may be MUST accept as a simple fact and draw the only possible conclusion.
* * *
NEW YORK TIMES
LONDON — A Russian fighter jet fired a missile at a manned British surveillance aircraft flying over the Black Sea in September but the munition malfunctioned, according to U.S. defense officials and a recently leaked classified U.S. intelligence report. The incident was far more serious than originally portrayed and could have amounted to an act of war.
According to two U.S. defense officials, the Russian pilot had misinterpreted what a radar operator on the ground was saying to him and thought he had permission to fire. The pilot, who had locked on the British aircraft, fired, but the missile did not launch properly.
In October, Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, described the close call in a briefing to Parliament members as “potentially dangerous” after the Russian fighter jet “released a missile in the vicinity” of the British aircraft. But one of the leaked documents said the Sept. 29 event was a “near-shoot down.”
The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
The dance between surveillance aircraft from the United States and other NATO countries, and Russian fighter jets over the Black Sea has played out for years, especially after Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Tensions have only grown as Ukraine increasingly relies on Western-gathered intelligence to push back against the Russian invasion that began last year.
Last month, a Russian warplane knocked into a U.S. surveillance drone over the Black Sea, hitting the drone’s propeller and causing it to crash in international waters. The collision was the first known physical contact between the Russian and American militaries since the war in Ukraine started.
The two U.S. defense officials with direct knowledge of the near shoot down in September confirmed the seriousness of the encounter between the British plane — a four-engine aircraft known as an RC-135 Rivet Joint — and two Russian Su-27 fighter jets. The British aircraft is often manned with a crew of around 30 people and is capable of intercepting radio traffic.
The defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the British Rivet Joint was listening to intercepted communications between a Russian radar controller on the ground and one of the pilots of the Russian Su-27s dispatched to monitor the aircraft.
The British Rivet Joint was in international airspace off the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea. The pilots of the Russian aircraft were not in visual range of the British patrol but were equipped with missiles capable of hitting it, the officials said.
One of the officials who was briefed on the encounter called it “really, really scary.”
Asked to comment on The New York Times’s reporting and the leaked document, a British defense official said in a statement, “A significant proportion of the content of these reports is untrue, manipulated, or both. We strongly caution against anybody taking the veracity of these claims at face value and would also advise them to take time to question the source and purpose of such leaks.”
In his October briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Wallace said that he took his concerns following the incident to the Russian military, including Russia’s minister of defense, Sergei K. Shoigu. The Kremlin indicated there had been a “technical malfunction,” Mr. Wallace said, adding that he did not consider the incident a deliberate escalation by the Russians, according to a Reuters report at the time.
Mr. Wallace said that in the wake of the incident, surveillance flights were initially suspended, but then were restarted with fighter aircraft escorts. Now, British Rivet Joints patrolling over the Black Sea fly with at least one Typhoon fighter jet alongside.
The September episode has eerie echoes of a time during the Cold War when Soviet fighter jets scrambled to intercept what they feared was a hostile aircraft that was actually Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 passenger jet. The airliner had accidentally flown into Soviet airspace, and after a Soviet pilot gave a partial description of the passenger jet to a ground radar station, he was given permission to fire.
All 269 people aboard were killed after two air-to-air missiles slammed into the aircraft.
With tensions high and miscommunication a staple of wartime environments, NATO surveillance flights are now flying farther away from Crimea than required by international law. Instead of as close as 12 miles off the coast, which counts as international airspace, the U.S. military is currently observing a wider limit of about 46 miles, which is described in one of the leaked documents as a “SECDEF Directed Standoff.”
The classified documents also point to a number of air-to-air incidents involving Russian aircraft and NATO planes and drones that occurred since the Sept. 29 near shoot down. From Oct. 1 to Feb. 22, British, French and American flights reacted to six different events in which Russian aircraft approached their patrols, from distances of six nautical miles to just 100 feet.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. @tmgneff
Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also the Pentagon correspondent. A member of the Times staff since 1983, he has shared four Pulitzer Prizes. @EricSchmittNYT
Posted by: AG | Apr 14 2023 17:51 utc | 36
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