America This Week, March 1, 2024: "The Surveillance State is a Moody, Sadistic Child"

I'm good.

It's getting spring-like here in Montana, slightly, and I don't know, I've started sort

of emerging into the new year, looking forward to what I know is going to be the craziest

year we've had in a string of crazy years.

So I'm just kind of prepping myself, I'm going to the gym, I'm eating right.

And for some reason, I'm watching the rise of the Bitcoin price very carefully right

now, because I see Bitcoin as a proxy for anxiety in general.

I think it's finally settled in with the sort of normie investing public that it is digital

gold.

And in this period, what does anybody want but digital gold?

And the two things we like best, digital and gold.

And so as it soars to new heights, and all this money starts flying into it, I get greatly

fearful.

I don't know why.

the board.

And notably, that anxiety is connected to many different things, not just one thing.

And we saw examples of that this week.

I guess we should start with, it's not often that news begins in the press, and that is

the news story, that something came out in the news.

But we had a significant, a very significant development, I would say, in the course of

the last week, when the New York Times, in the persons of Adam Entis and Mitchell Schwartz,

published an article called The Spy War, How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Bite Putin.

This is the article that came out.

And it's an expose.

I would say, once upon a time in the New York Times, we came to expect every now and then

there would be blockbuster pieces of investigative journalism.

And not so long ago, there were still things that were sort of genuinely like that in the

Times.

I would even classify the massive audit of Donald Trump's finances as being in that general

genre.

But this was a very different type of story that, right up in the lead, tells you that

this is something entirely different, immediately tells you, based on 200 interviews with officials

from three different countries, from Europe, Ukraine, and the United States, that there

were listening posts in the Ukrainian forest.

It starts out at a listening post in the Ukrainian forest, which is part of a CIA-supported network

of spy bases constructed in the past years, eight years, that includes 12 secret locations

along the Russian border.

And then it goes on to describe a 10-year history of communication and cooperation between

the CIA and Ukraine.

And it is absolutely packed full of stuff that the public, under normal circumstances,

would never get a whiff of.

And well, there's a number of different angles to this.

First of all, it exploded a whole bunch of myths and propaganda about how tight we were

or not militarily and intelligence-wise with Ukraine at the start of the war.

But it also, it just kind of disclosed things that we weren't expecting to hear.

Walter, what was your initial reaction to this story?

My mind spun wondering who the audience for this was, what it was meant to do.

We seem to be in a period in which the meta issue is continued funding for Ukraine.

And so I guess I saw it in that context as a statement of just how, a sort of stunning

statement of just how dug in we are with them for how long we have been and to what an elaborate

level we are.

And I suppose that point was to say, this is your side, this is our side.

We made a compact a long time ago, here's how knit together this effort is.

You're going to pull the plug on this, really?

I mean, something like that.

So just to make clear, the backdrop here, as you point out, is there is still a pending

vote on funding for the continuation of the war in Ukraine from the American side.

Now, we just haven't had a situation like this where Congress has actually threatened

to pull the plug on the military conflict that the national security establishment wants.

And right now, we're at a point where voters are telling specifically the House Republican

Caucus that they do not want a $95 billion military aid package, $61 billion of which

is meant for Ukraine, that they don't want a yes vote on this.

It's been delayed multiple times.

Supposedly there's a deadline on it.

Maybe even by the time this comes out on Friday, that question will be resolved.

But yes, that vote hanging in the balance is in the background of this story.

But that could mean a number of things.

Is this article meant to persuade people that we must continue this incredibly tight relationship?

Because what kinds of things are being disclosed in this piece?

And I just want to give one example.

This is the kind of thing that got described over and over again.

So they have this incredibly tight relationship that goes back to right after the Maidan coup.

Essentially, they even talk about the new Ukrainian intelligence chief sort of cold

calling the CIA and MI6 in the middle of the Maidan revolution and saying like, hey,

we need help.

Kind of like a ridiculously unbelievable scenario, but whatever.

That's where they're placing the chronological beginning of this relationship.

And then they kind of say repeatedly that the Americans set down these rules of the

relationship, whereby anything that has any possibility of having a lethal outcome needs

to be run through Washington first.

And they keep describing the Ukrainians as just freelancing these bloodthirsty savages,

you know, these Slavs.

And here's an example.

As the partnership deepened after 2016, Ukrainians became impatient with what they consider Washington's

undue caution and began staging assassinations and other lethal operations, which violated

the terms the White House thought Ukrainians had agreed to.

And then, you know, they go on later to find out that they were still doing it over and

over again in defiance of what Russia, what America and particularly the Obama administration

supposedly wanted.

Like, we were infuriated when we found out that troops that had been trained by the CIA

were involved in these operations.

Like, oh, you know, we're shocked, shocked.

But I read that, Walter, you know, and I called a couple of people who have some experience

with these things, people on both the left and the right.

And, you know, they they suggested, look, this is this is your classic pre bunking.

Yes.

You know, it's a warning where when if this whole thing goes wrong, if if this relationship

is about to be ended this week and the faucet gets shut off, there are going to be a lot

of leaks coming out and we're going to have stories, too.

Right.

So we are already not going to inoculate ourselves against charges that we oversaw campaigns

of assassinations.

And they, you know, they named people who were assassinated and how we had pre knowledge

of these things.

So, I don't know, how much credence do you give that?

So.

So in that framework, the story is, hey, look, the dog got off the leash and bit all these

people.

And we did our best.

And don't blame us.

Also, when it comes out, perhaps, like you said that, you know, we did all this dirty

stuff, hit it well.

We were doing our best.

And it's old news anyway, because, hey, remember that Times story?

We didn't.

I mean, it reminds you a little bit of covid, covid pre bunking, you know, where they they

slowly let us know that maybe this vaccine didn't work all that well or this and that,

you know.

So it could be ass covering.

It's probably a few things at once.

I mean, what it does sound like is the truth in the sense that, you know, whether or not

we tried to restrain them and they went rogue, it gives enough detail about these bases that

you're pretty sure they exist.

I mean, they visit them.

This is done with the thing to know about this article is it was obviously done with

complete cooperation.

I mean, these guys were treated to top secret tours of of these bases.

this article.

Now, I don't know, Adamantus, but let's just say he is a recurring character in a lot of

the big intelligence based stories dating back nearly a decade now, a lot of which haven't

on former Trump aide Carter Page and, you know, they have the dramatic headline and

conclusion that this means there must be probable cause that former Trump aide is an agent of

a foreign power.

Right.

Adam was on that story.

He's on a he's on a long list of them.

I think you you found a tweet that that chronicled a whole bunch of them.

But there was one that I remembered specifically that goes back even, you know, to the pre

Russiagate period.

And this is a fascinating story.

U.S. spying on Israel snares Congress.

NSA's targeting of Israeli sold leaders swept up in the content of private conversations

with U.S. lawmakers by Adam Antus and Danny Yadrin.

This is when he was at The Wall Street Journal.

And what the story basically says, ultimately, is that it describes how the Obama White House

sort of inadvertently listened to critics of the Obama's Iran deal in the U.S. Congress

who happened to be talking to Jewish leaders in Israel at the time.

So it's it's the it's like one of the early stories about the misuse of FISA.

Right.

I've got to give credit to Lee Smith, the the author of I think it's the plot against

the president.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So he's he noted the presence of this particular reporter on a lot of these stories.

And you can go a little bit crazy trying to play the game of who which reporter is which

official's favorite outlet.

And it's not always productive to do that.

But let's just say that.

One thing you can say is that this is not the kind of story where things are collected

in defiance of the national security establishment.

Right.

It's not coming from low level leakers who are going around their bosses to give to give

these reporters, you know, certain details.

It's not Cyrus's family's jewel story where the sources are going to be in trouble if

they get outed.

Right.

This is one where he did where the reporters get to take a tour of all these places.

And it's got 200 different interviews and they're on the record quotes from the senior

Ukrainian intelligence officials.

And so it's kind of like what you would call an approved history.

But why?

Right.

It's just so odd.

You know, these are the same people who've been telling us we well, we can't disclose

any we can't disclose that name.

You already know that that would be sources and methods, you know.

And then they're just babbling all kinds of crazy secrets in the middle of this amazing

article.

You know, I'll do the sort of edge case speculations.

Maybe it's not completely true.

Maybe they're exaggerating CIA capabilities.

Maybe this is a story meant to scare the Russians into thinking, you know, we can hear everything

you're doing right on you.

Right.

It does make them look pretty competent, which they often don't in some ways, you know, in

a very sneaky way.

They really got in there, you know, they're OK, then it could also be the kind of pre

bunking we just discussed in which people afraid of further disclosure go first and

sort of disclose their way rather than wait for somebody else to do it.

In another, perhaps more damaging way.

Or it could be that.

And I saw this, I saw this talk about somewhere, I'm not sure where, an attempt to scare these

House Republicans into going, wow, we're messing with something beyond our can here.

This is this isn't the kind of thing you withhold funding for easily.

It's sort of like revealing it reminded the whole setup that we created in Ukraine reminded

me of what we did in Vietnam before the war proper, you know, the way we.

You know, in the sort of Graham Green, quiet American days before the thing really broke

out, we sent massive troops, we had these CIA operations all across the advisers, advisers

and so on, and so it gave me a Vietnam feel, I got to say, just as an audience member,

I got a chill went up my spine and I went like, wow, they have been preparing for something

bigger or longer than I than I knew.

And like I say, it was a flashback to Vietnam.

And. You know, I can imagine this as a warning to American politicians, don't get in the

way of this thing that also functions as a pre bunking in case things go south.

But the problem in analyzing it is that we lack one piece of crucial information, which

is what is the estimate on the part of the American military complex as to the likelihood

of succeeding in this war?

You know, if they think God, you know, if they think they're about to lose, then you

see it one way.

If you if if if they actually have something up their sleeve and are just needing that

extra, you know, hundred ninety billion to pull off the the big trick by which they get

rid of Putin, you know, suddenly recover all sorts of lost ground.

Well, then that's another thing.

But without knowing but without knowing what they forecast, it's hard for me to interpret

this.

Beshara.

You know, puts out these documents that show the military, you know, their own assessment

saying this thing is going to be a stalemate that's going to drag on well beyond 2023.

And if that's what their internal assessment is, and that was probably assuming continued

funding.

papers, Ukraine edition?

I mean, I think it functions on multiple levels.

I mean, there's even stuff in there about, well, we had to keep we had to put up with

all the unsanctioned assassinations and lethal operations and bombings and all this other

stuff, because we were getting good intel on Russiagate, basically.

Like, what?

70% chance this is going to be a blowout.

Let's blame them now.

Oh, so that we start sure so that we start the narrative of blame early.

heard at the beginning of the invasion.

There's there's a little bit of an implication there that, well, Barack Obama was deeply

worried about over provoking the Russians, right?

They were infuriated when they were hits done against Russian separatists, or when they

crossed into Russian territory, or when they mined airstrips or railroads or whatever it

was, because they didn't want to, you know, provoke a response from Russia.

Well, you know, what are they going to do now?

Are they going to are they going to go back and say, if they'd listened to us, maybe there

wouldn't have been an invasion in 2022, which is kind of exactly the opposite of what we

were told in 2022.

I mean, I don't know, but what I do think is that this kind of story, what's so fascinating

about it is that it's meant for every audience, but the general public.

I mean, you don't you don't get to take reporters on tours of secret intelligence bases in the

forests without the very top, you know, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden, et cetera.

Now, there is one overweening concern, I would imagine, for all these people, which is the

possible victory of Donald Trump, right?

I mean, we've gotten so scared to forecast things, but because, you know, it's the end

of democracy and all that.

But there's got to be a faction that's looking forward to a possible Trump presidency.

And in that presidency, because because all this was going on while Trump was president,

remember, and have you ever heard him breathe a word about it?

So that's one of the fascinating parts about this story is that most of the action in this

story takes place during the Obama administration.

So were they all just sort of dry docked while, you know, did they cover it up?

Did Trump know about this?

And actually, the piece talks about how, you know, Trump put Russia hawks in key positions,

including Mike Pompeo, a CIA director, and Bolton, his national security advisor.

And that allowed this whole thing to keep rolling without much, you know, interference.

And, you know, draw what conclusions you may from that.

But there's not a whole lot of inside the White House stuff going on in this story.

Whereas there's an awful lot of stuff about how, you know, poor John Biden had to talk,

you know, vacillating Barack Obama off the ledge and tell him that, you know, hey, we had yes,

they broke the rules.

We got to stick with this thing because, you know, it's bearing fruit, blah, blah.

There are a lot of those scenes, but they're all in the past.

So, again, without getting into the exercise of speculating who the main sources are,

it's notable that most of your richly detailed stuff comes from a certain time period

back then, and then now, right?

And most of the richly detailed stuff paints the Obama administration as concerned,

but concerned about the infractions and the sort of rogue nature of Ukraine's behavior, but

subordinating that to general, a general concern over Putin and Russia.

So it does look a little bit like a PR job for the Obama administration.

And why should it need one now at this point?

There's even stuff about how Joe Biden himself back in the Obama days had to call up,

I think it was Petro Poroshenko, the president at the time, and say like, hey, this bridge

operation you guys did, it's making this whole thing a hard sell for me back here.

You know, you guys got to cut it out, right?

So even Biden is presented as part of this whole,

you know, let's be aggressive, but cautious kind of thing.

But yes, why would they need a cover story?

Because of the possibility that, you know...

and there are going to be certain people who know things who are going to be

uncooperative press-wise.

Now, why did that matter?

Because there was a series of statements made by the head of Ukraine's defense intelligence,

Kirill Budanov, who just came out and just sort of crapped on a whole series of stories that

we were trying to make a big deal out of.

But there was a tale about how Russia was about to get a whole bunch of long-range

missiles from Iran.

And Budanov's like, yeah, no, that's not really grounded in reality, that story.

Or, you know, they didn't get the missiles.

And God, I forget what the other story was.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

The whole Navalny thing.

Yeah.

Because, you know, when Navalny died on the 16th, everybody went nuts.

We imposed sanctions, 500 new sanctions, Joe Biden.

Putin is clearly responsible.

Now, I think when you have a political prisoner and he dies in prison, I think it's reasonable

to say that the government's responsible.

But probably, right?

But still, there were lots of people who went further than that and said, it's murder, blah,

blah, blah.

Budanov comes out and says, yeah, I hate to, like, break the bad news.

He even put it that way.

I hate to disappoint some people.

But he died of a blood clot.

He died of natural causes.

Ukrainian intelligence, military establishment, the United States, and Russia?

In other words, is this positioning around some possible future negotiation or something?

I can't imagine Ukraine relished being portrayed as a mad dog that, you know, couldn't discipline

itself and that...

orders.

Once they lost their nuclear weapons, they gave them up, what, in 1994, after the Soviet

Union broke up, a controversial decision even back then.

But at the time, I think we were trying to stay on the right side of Boris Yeltsin and

Russia more than we were worried about, you know, Leningrad, Ukraine, or whatever, whoever

it was.

And, but Ukraine is essentially defenseless against Russia, despite the longstanding highs.

And here we come in, and, you know, we're encouraging them to build bases.

We release videos of American diplomats going to visit, you know, Ukrainian military bases

and conducting inspections of shooting exercises and things like that, with American soldiers

advising, you know, we release this, this kind of stuff.

The Russians are going to see this.

It puts Ukraine in a very tough position.

I mean, maybe they wanted to be there, right?

Because there was already, there were already hostilities in Donbass that were, you know,

beyond the pale, right?

But if we were, we were making representations to them about how we would be there for them

always.

And, you know, we nudged them into this place, and now they're being, you know, they're in

full-fledged war with Russia.

And we back out because, you know, what, democracy?

I mean, I would be furious if I were a Ukrainian official in that scenario.

Would you not be?

But maybe they foresee the fall of Zelensky and his crew, you know, maybe they're setting

up for a new Ukrainian leader in a way.

You know, you hear all the time, just as we heard, you know, Putin was about to die or

be deposed or run out of town or whatever.