Better in their words…

A special edition, describing the contents and significance of the CIA’s historic, unprecedented public disclosure of its Ukraine project, as 2024 continues delivering in handfuls, plus plenty more.

Source: BURN NOTICE ☙ Wednesday, February 28, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

🔥 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.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html

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, u, 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. From Reuters:

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?

Should Congress call hearings to get to the bottom of this indescribable intelligence failure?

But those questions are just the beginning.

🚀 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 timingof 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.

🔥 To close us out, check out this terrific ad from the Trump Campaign, responding with alacrity to the horrific murder of Laken Riley, which Joe Biden has yet to mention at all, if he even knows it happened, that is:

CLIP: The Border Is Not Secure, by the Trump Campaign (0:57).

Joe Biden is increasingly looking like a forgotten gallon of milk at the back of the fridge, which when you shake it, the white stuff inside doesn’t move at all. In other words, long past his expiration date.

Finally, what is it with these globalists and their fascination with building underground bunkers? Did those idiots mutate their genes with mole DNA or something?

Have a wonderful Wednesday, C&C! And come on back here tomorrow, where everything is above-board and not in any secret underground bunkers, for more elucidating Coffee & Covid.

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