One Particular Pentagon Doc Exposes The Unprofessionalism Of The US’ Intel Community
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 12, 2023
Vice News reported on one of the recently leaked Pentagon documents in their article titled “Leaked Pentagon Docs Share Wild Rumor: Kremlin Plans to ‘Throw’ Putin’s War While He’s Getting Chemo”. Someone in the US’ Intelligence Community (IC) spied on a high-profile target in Kiev who claimed to have heard from a Kremlin source that two top Russian military officials planned to sabotage the special operation around 5 March while President Putin allegedly underwent chemotherapy.
Instead of reasonably questioning that outlandishly conspiratorial claim, they felt it fitting to pass it along to the Pentagon, which explains why it ended up in one of the leaked documents. This was extremely unprofessional because the allegation should have been closely scrutinized first in order to ascertain its veracity so as not to inadvertently mislead major US military figures. The very fact that it wasn’t shows that there are serious problems in terms of how the US’ IC operates.
For example, it could have been the case that Russia used a double agent to plant this ridiculous rumor for the purpose of deceiving its opponents into getting their guard down around that time. Another explanation is that the supposed source really does work for Ukrainian intelligence but just told his handlers whatever he thought they wanted to hear so that they’d keep getting paid. A third possibility is that the Ukrainian official knew he was being spied on by the US and invented the story to mislead it.
In any case, the scenario that they speculated about didn’t unfold since those two top Russian military officials didn’t sabotage the special operation around 5 March like the report claimed would happen. Nevertheless, major US military figures were still exposed to this ultimately false information, which could have influenced their relevant calculations in this conflict. This only happened because the US’ IC is so unprofessional that they didn’t try to confirm the information first before passing it along to them.
Casual observers of foreign affairs might be under the naïve impression that whatever government officials tell one another in secret supposedly has some degree of truth to it, ergo why they’re inclined to extend credence to the claims made in whatever leak it might be, whether this one or others. In reality, they lack the proper understanding of how the US’ IC operates, which results in them also being misled and falling under false impressions such as the one pushed in that particular document analyzed above.
Russia or Ukraine attempted to manipulate the predicted end US recipient of this false information as was previously explained. If the alleged source was a double agent, then Moscow planted this story to mislead Kiev and Washington into getting their guard down at that time, but it could also have just been Kiev manipulating its patron to make its major military officials think that the Kremlin is in chaos. Either way, the end result is that this false information was pushed up the stovepipes to Pentagon leaders.
It can therefore be regarded as an immensely successful disinformation operation at least with respect to exposing its intended target to this conspiracy theory, though it remains unclear whether they acted on it in any way. Even so, it could have indirectly influenced them by contributing to other details that major US military officials considered when making various decisions related to how they’re waging this proxy war.
The takeaway is that casual observers should reflect on the lesson contained within this piece in order to better understand the way that the US’ IC operates, which is surprisingly unprofessional as revealed by this particular document contained in the latest leaks. Wishful thinking was obviously at play, which is why someone felt it fitting to pass along this ultimately false information to Pentagon leaders. This should never have happened and shows that there are serious problems in terms of competence.
Pentagon Leaks Show Washington ‘Dissidents’ Want ‘Offramp’ From Ukraine ‘Disaster’
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 11.04.2023
The leak of US defense assessments of Ukraine’s long-promised military offensive has caused turmoil in Washington and Kiev. Retired US diplomat James Jatras, an adviser to the US Senate Republican leadership, and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, explain the motives behind it.
Pentagon officials behind the leak of Ukraine’s battle plans are looking for an “offramp” from the escalating proxy conflict with Russia, two former Washington insiders have said.
Pundits have speculated that the Pentagon reports on Ukrainian battle plans leaked to Telegram channels and heavily reported in the US mainstream media are a US smokescreen to misdirect Russia, a convenient excuse for ending costly support to Volodymyr Zelensky’s Kiev regime or even a Moscow psy-op fake.
Retired US diplomat James Jatras told Sputnik that the leak “indicates that there are some dissident voices within the US government who are not comfortable with the direction of policy.”
Those elements “would like to slow it down or maybe even change its course” but are still “a distinct minority within the establishment,” he stressed.
The Senate adviser said it was significant that the leak came from the Department of Defense, not his old employer, the State Department.
“There are people within the military who realize that we’re moving toward a potential disaster in Ukraine. Those are more realistic people,” Jatras said. “They’re familiar with the hard facts of military power,” while the State Department and the White House “believe their own propaganda.”
Other former US military and intelligence officers have argued that the leaks are the result of frustration over Washington’s backing of Ukraine. But the ex-diplomat said that came from “further down the chain of command,” and “primarily within the military.”
He also disagreed that the leak complicated the US plans for the conflict, since the consensus in Washington was that Ukraine just “needs to roll the dice” and create “the appearance of making some sort of progress.”
At that point the US will either up the ante with its support for Kiev or announce “some kind of a peace proposal” based on the illusion that they “go to the table with an advantage on Ukraine’s side,” Jatras predicted.
The “danger” was that Russia might grant the West a “face-saving gesture” in return for a peace deal that meets its demands of de-militarization, de-Nazification and no NATO membership for Ukraine.
“These are fundamentally dishonest people here,” Jatras cautioned. “They would not keep any word or any assurance any more than they lived up to the Minsk Agreement.”
As for the timing of the revelations, the Republican advisor said the intention was likely to was to slow down or change the direction of policy,” pointing to a US “tradition” of leaks from the establishment all the way back to the Vietnam War.
But he noted that “none of those things made much difference in the direction of American policy. It still took years for the policy establishment to be ground down by having reality catch up with them.”
Jatras said more leaks could follow, but only if there was a “really disastrous development on the ground in Ukraine.” While some neoconservative Republicans want to switch focus to a confrontation with China over Taiwan, “leaving Ukraine would not be as cost free for American prestige internationally as was our loss in Afghanistan.”
Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern told Sputnik that he did not accept either claims that the documents were part of a disinformation effort.
“This is somebody who has access to highly sensitive information, probably at the Joint Chiefs of Staff level, who decided, my God, you know, if the American people knew this, maybe we could stop this terrible, inexorable drift toward wider war in Ukraine and perhaps including nuclear weapons,” McGovern argued.
“The Ukrainians are upset, of course, because it shows that we’re spying on them. But, you know, surprise, surprise, we do that on everybody,” the former Langley insider pointed out. “Precisely the same thing happened when high level people leaked information, which became too embarrassing for the president to widen the war. In that case, in Vietnam.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office has already said that Kiev’s plans for the long-advertised spring counter-offensive will have to be re-written following the leak. McGovern took that as proof that Ukraine isn’t ready for a major operation.
“Zelensky himself said three weeks ago ‘We can’t do a spring counteroffensive unless we get the weapons that we need’ and everyone knows that the weapons that they need, although promised, won’t get there in time,” McGovern pointed out. “So this is kind of a way to rationalize.”
The former intelligence official argued the real reason for the leak was that “people in Washington are trying to find their offramp” and need to “expose the lies that have been told by people like the defense secretary, people like the head of the CIA.”
“There’s a hopeful sign here that these leaks will shut the Americans into thinking, whoa, wait a second, we’ve been lied to about this war. Ukraine is not winning,” McGovern said. “Maybe it’s time to sit down, do something sensible and negotiate.”
For more in-depth analysis and commentary, check out the latest episode of Sputnik’s podcast The Critical Hour.
British ex-soldier turned journalist charged with spying in Afghanistan
The Cradle | April 9, 2023
The Afghan government detained three British nationals under suspicion of spying for their country; one of those accused was a former soldier stationed in Afghanistan, now supposedly working as a journalist, according to TOLOnews.
According to a source cited by the news site, the former soldier was stationed in the southern province of Helmand, a deeply contested area of Afghanistan, during the occupation.
“If they come here illegally, or violated the laws of Afghanistan or worked as spies for other countries, it is considered a crime, and any country has the right to detain such foreign nationals and introduce them to the relevant organizations,” said Sarwar Niazai, a military analyst.
The former soldier Kevin Cornwell and another British national were detained by the Taliban-led government on 11 January 2023, both supposedly carrying illegal firearms. A total of three UK citizens are currently detained in Afghanistan.
Toryalai Zazai, a Taliban combat veteran, told the Afghan news channel that “the country should be rescued from the spies, the country should be rescued from the intelligence circles. The Islamic Emirate should not allow these invader countries to send their intelligence representatives to our country.”
Meanwhile, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman said, “If there are British citizens abroad, then the UK government is going to do whatever it takes to ensure that they are safe,” in response to the arrests.
Journalists around the world face increasing endangerment as the profession has become intertwined with foreign intelligence services to carry out their work.
Operation Mockingbird is perhaps the most well-known activity undertaken by the CIA during the cold war to manipulate news organizations to shape the coverage of events.
In addition, the CIA program aimed to collect intelligence via journalists by either infiltrating news organizations or bribing individuals.
Carl Bernstein unveiled the secret operation by the CIA in 1977, uncovering the depth of the program, which included the recruitment of journalists in various institutions around the world.
Following the damning revelations, the CIA admitted to having recruited at least 400 Journalists and 25 organizations worldwide.
“To this day, the CIA still attempts to monitor and manipulate public opinion through this despicable practice. The so-called truth that underpins a news story, from the perspective of the U.S. government, is not worth mentioning at all, with news media just being used as a tool to safeguard the country’s hegemony in the world,” writes the People’s Daily Online.
Meanwhile, a Russian court charged Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich with espionage on 7 April.
Gershkovich, who denied the charges, said he only maintained journalistic activities in Russia and did not work as a spy for a foreign intelligence service.
The White House commented on the situation, saying it will “do everything we can” to ensure his release.
Evan is not a spy; Evan has never been a spy,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.
FBI targeting Russians on Facebook
RT | April 9, 2023
The FBI has launched a social media campaign seeking to convince Russian nationals to provide sensitive information about the activities of their home country’s authorities, Fox News reported on Friday. The ad, which was first posted in February, was said to have been appearing on Twitter, Facebook and Google.
“Do you want to change your future?” Alan Kohler, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, says in the video shared online. “The FBI values you. The FBI can help you. But only you have the power to take the first step.”
Fox News cited a source as saying that, although the Bureau has run ads targeting Russians in the past, this year it decided that “a video was more effective.”
The FBI’s website encourages Russians willing to offer information to visit the bureau’s main office in Washington, DC, to call the FBI hotline, or to send a message online.
The US stepped up efforts to recruit informants in recent years as Moscow and Washington have been locked in a diplomatic row over Ukraine. In 2019, the Bureau posted a series of ads on Facebook, urging Russians to come forward, although this message, written in Russian, contained typos.
In 2020, the FBI’s online campaign aimed at potential Russian informants included images of popular Soviet actor and singer Vladimir Vysotsky, known for portraying a police detective on screen. The CIA, meanwhile, has been publishing job postings for people who speak Russian.
US efforts to ban TikTok are pure projection by the world’s biggest spy power
By Timur Fomenko | RT | April 4, 2023
As the United States contemplates a possible ban on TikTok, it relentlessly accuses Beijing of using the popular Chinese-owned social media application as a means of espionage, claiming that the Communist Party has access to user data.
Ironically, Washington itself is known to be doing exactly what US politicians are accusing China of doing. Using the unique advantage of having jurisdiction over the world’s top internet companies, the US has given itself the right to look into the private communications of foreign citizens anywhere in the world. Combine that data-sharing between intelligence agencies of the US and its allies, and you get the most comprehensive espionage regime in the world.
While American politicians and media constantly talk about fears of Chinese espionage, the near-absence of coverage of Washington’s own spying efforts ought to be a reminder of where the true power lies. When it comes to the shady activities of the CIA and the NSA, the public tends to only learn what they did years later from declassified documents, or what they “have been doing all along” from rare whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. All discussion and speculation about what they “may be doing right now” tends to be dismissed as conspiracy theories. Conversely, allegations of Chinese spying activities are constantly explained as “we all know they’re doing it” in the public eye, despite the lack of solid proof.
These warning signs remind us that the most cryptic source of all spying in the world is not China, but the US. Since the Second World War, the US has, in conjunction with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, maintained a worldwide spying regime known as the ‘Five Eyes’ which, in the age of mass communications, has been designed so that each government can bypass its own privacy laws and judicial restraints in order to spy on each other’s citizens, while supplying information within the group. In doing so, they have created a number of communication interception and surveillance programs, as revealed by Snowden, such as PRISM, ECHELON, XKEYSCORE, etc.
Of course, the US nearly holds a monopoly over the means of information and data gathering – definitely more so than any other country. This is because it has the privilege of having the world’s most dominant internet companies located on its own soil, such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Meta. These organizations are required by law to share data with the US government and authorities should they request it. But the US has also gone even further, as revealed by the Washington Post in 2020, the CIA had secretly acquired a Swiss cryptography company and used it to rig those machines to be able to spy on all who used them.
In pursuing its comprehensive spying regime, the US has been keeping an eye on friend and foe alike. This has included wiretapping the chancellor of Germany, coordinating with the intelligence services of other countries to undermine their commercial interests, such as Denmark and the Eurofighter program, and the list goes on.
And yet, American lawmakers suggest that you should truly be scared of TikTok, even as they prepare to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows US intelligence agencies to spy on foreign citizens’ phones and online communications without a warrant. Legalized in 2008, Section 702 needs to be reauthorized every few years lest it lapses under a sunset clause. Congress extended it in 2012 and again in 2018 and there’s little reason to believe it will fail to do so again before the next deadline, set for December this year.
The real problem Washington has with TikTok is not the alleged spying for Beijing’s benefit – it’s the fact that TikTok is the first global-spanning social media network of its magnitude that isn’t under US control – and thus, cannot be weaponized by the US for its own espionage. As such, it weakens the global surveillance regime built up by the US, which is, perhaps, the principal motivation behind Washington’s obsession with keeping control of “the future of the internet” out of Beijing’s hands. It’s more than a matter of spy games – it’s a matter of hegemony, and as such, it’s pure projection on Washington’s part to sound the alarm over TikTok’s alleged breaches of privacy.
As it stands, the US has an unrivaled digital spying network and is the greatest single threat to individual privacy online. If major internet companies are not owned or controlled by Washington or its closest allies, then the privacy of individuals around the world is increased, not decreased. The US has never been apologetic or open about how it monitors the communications of billions of people. Even if one has their suspicions about China, how can Washington’s claims about TikTok, and the motives behind the mounting pressure on the social media platform, be taken at face value?
Sy Hersh Slams ‘Stupid’ NYT Story on ‘Ukrainian’ Trace Behind Nord Stream Blasts
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.03.2023
The veteran investigative journalist best known for blowing the lid off major US government lies, from Watergate and the My Lai Massacre to the Syrian gas attacks, penned a series of explosive Substack pieces last month revealing direct US complicity in the Nord Stream pipeline attacks.
Seymour Hersh says he has even more details corroborating the Biden administration’s involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage attacks, but cannot share them for fear of outing his sources.
“Biden authorized the blast. And the people involved know what he did. You know what orders came. I know a lot more about this than I want to say. But I have to protect the people who talk to me,” Hersh said in an interview with Austrian media.
“I know what I wrote is true. I know that it is right. I know the meetings I have described and the details of what happened in Norway. I’ve been involved with the intelligence community for 50 years,” the 85-year-old veteran journalist said, addressing the smear campaign being run against him by the legacy media in the wake of his bombshell Nord Stream-related publications.
Commenting on the story put out by The New York Times and German media earlier this month claiming that a “pro-Ukrainian group” without links to any state blew up the pipelines using a rented commercial yacht, Hersh called this version “stupid,” “unbelievable,” and a “crazy story with no sources.”
The veteran investigative journalist, one of the few in the contemporary US media landscape who still believes in the media’s role as the fourth estate, also took aim at the legacy media for ignoring his story in fealty to power. “If 90 percent of editors were fired, we’d be much better off, because they’re so afraid to write anything critical of Biden, thinking they’re going to put a Republican back in the White House,” he said.
Hersh said the attack on Nord Stream was a “signal” to the Western Europeans from Biden – that if they didn’t “want to go all the way” in the conflict with Russia, the US would cut them off. “He did it. And the price for that will be very high in Europe. Europe will not have the gas it needs and you will have to pay more for it,” he said.
Hersh, a sympathizer of the Democratic Party when it comes to social, environmental, and immigration issues, characterized Biden’s foreign policy as a disaster, with Washington’s badmouthing of China and Russia ultimately helping to “weld the two of them together.” As for the crisis in Ukraine, the journalist expects the NATO proxy conflict to fail. “Russia is going to win this war,” he said.
Seymour Hersh published his first piece on the Nord Stream attacks on February 8, detailing how US Navy divers laid the explosives that blew up the pipelines in June 2022 under the cover of NATO’s BALTOPS drills, with a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance aircraft triggering them to explode three months later. Hersh subsequently wrote several follow-up stories with additional information and historical context.
US and German media rolled out their own stories this month, citing intelligence officials, claiming that a “pro-Ukrainian group” without any ties to Kiev blew up the pipelines independently using a rented yacht. Moscow dismissed these stories as “disinformation” designed to divert attention from the real perpetrators, and repeated long-standing calls for thorough and transparent probes into the acts of terror.
Bill Passed by House and Senate to Declassify COVID Origins Documents May Be Attempt to ‘Frame’ China
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 13, 2023
Lawmakers and media misrepresented a bill requiring the declassification of documents related to the origins of COVID-19, according to several experts who warned that contrary to what the public was told, the legislation limits the types of documents the government must declassify — raising questions about the bill’s real intent.
According to the sponsors of the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023 — which sailed through the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives and is awaiting President Biden’s signature — the bill requires the government to declassify all documents pertaining to COVID-19.
But experts interviewed by The Defender said the bill requires the declassification only of documents related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China — the epicenter of the “lab leak theory.”
They suggested the limitations may be intended to reduce the culpability of U.S. and private actors in the potential leak of — or development of — COVID-19, by placing full blame on China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Bill’s backers made ‘false claims’
Independent journalist Sam Husseini said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the Senate’s co-sponsor of the COVID-19 Origin Act, made “claims about the bill which are false.”
Hawley, on March 1, tweeted:
Speaking to Fox News March 2, Hawley made similar claims, saying, “My bill … will declassify all of the information the federal government has on COVID origins.”
Hawley later followed up his statements with a letter addressed to Chinese President Xi Jinping, informing him of the bill’s passage. This prompted a response from the Chinese government, according to The Gateway Pundit.
Another of the bill’s Senate co-sponsors, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), said in a statement:
“The American people deserve transparency, free from censorship or spin. It’s time to declassify everything we know about COVID’s origins and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, now.”
Braun also tweeted:
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, told the House:
“The American public deserves answers to every aspect of COVID-19 pandemic including how this virus was created, and specifically whether it was a natural occurrence or was the result of a lab related event.”
Statements like these led media outlets, including The Defender, to report that if passed, the will would trigger the release of all documents — not just those related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Bill ‘dubiously named’
On his blog, Husseini said the COVID-19 Origin Act is “dubiously named” and instructs Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines only to:
“Declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), including (A) activities performed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology with or on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army [of China].”
“This means that information not related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology is not being requested and would almost certainly therefore remain classified,” Husseini wrote.
The bill also states:
“There is reason to believe the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology …
“… the Director of National Intelligence should declassify and make available to the public as much information as possible about the origin of COVID-19 so the United States and like-minded countries can —
“(A) identify the origin of COVID-19 as expeditiously as possible, and
“(B) use that information to take all appropriate measures to prevent a similar pandemic from occurring again.”
The bill requires Haines to turn over the declassified evidence “no later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act” and to submit to Congress an unclassified report containing all the documents requested in the bill, with “only such redactions as the Director determines necessary to protect sources and methods.”
Husseini noted that parts of the bill are unusually specific, focusing “on one strain of alleged evidence” by calling for Haines to turn over classified documents pertaining to “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in autumn 2019.”
“Now, that could be very important,” Husseini wrote. “But why is this legislation limiting disclosures?”
A ‘classic Nixonian limited hangout’?
Husseini suggested some members of Congress may not have been fully aware that the bill they were voting for does not appear to, in fact, fully declassify all documents related to the origins of COVID-19.
“I have no idea if members of Congress have actually read the legislation and realize how limited it is,” wrote Husseini, who, in another post, called Hawley’s public rhetoric regarding the bill “false and misleading.”
Husseini told The Defender the bill may be acting as a “limited hangout” with the purpose of acknowledging the “lab leak theory” on the one hand, but via legislation that “makes us accept half of the truth.”
Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender, “I’m afraid this [bill] is going to be a classic Nixonian limited hangout” that “does not call for the declassification of all those sources [that] should be declassified and/or released.”
Boyle said any information that is declassified “is going to be helpful,” but that the bill’s provision allowing redactions raises concern.
“Who knows what Avril Haines is going to knock out of this report,” he said.
Husseini noted that the bill also makes no provisions for providing information that several groups, including U.S. Right to Know and some media organizations, have requested — but not yet received — via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submissions. Husseini said this information “is not classified but is being withheld.”
Husseini cited Gary Ruskin, executive director and co-founder of U.S. Right to Know, who said:
“Much of the federal government’s information related to the origins of Covid-19 is not classified, or likely not classified. We just haven’t been able to access much of it yet via FOIA/FOIA litigation.
“The NIH’s [National Institutes of Health] conduct in stonewalling FOIAs is especially outrageous. It’s time for the Biden administration to tell NIH to comply with the FOIA.”
At a March 9 U.S. Department of State press conference, Ned Price, the agency’s spokesperson, appeared to stonewall Husseini when he asked why the government hasn’t responded to U.S. Right to Know’s FOIA requests related to government funding of bioweapons agents’ discovery research, including the funding of such research in China.
“We can respond in writing on a question that specific,” Price replied. When further pressed by Husseini, Price said, “I would ask that you be respectful of your colleagues.”
An attempt to blame the virus exclusively on China?
There has been a flurry of news reports in recent weeks originating from various branches of the U.S. government indicating broader acceptance of the “lab leak theory.”
The U.S. Department of Energy said it now believes COVID-19 most likely emerged from the Wuhan lab — a position subsequently adopted publicly by FBI Director Christopher Wray.
On March 8, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic heard the testimony of experts who also accepted the “lab leak theory.”
“All this — the recent hearings, the Hawley legislation, the WSJ piece — seem part of a coordinated effort on the part of the ‘intelligence community’ to own the pandemic story and use it for their purposes,” Husseini wrote.
Boyle shared similar concerns with The Defender :
“I am concerned that this [bill] is only going to get a part of the truth. Certainly not the full truth of what really happened here with COVID-19, which we need to get at.
“My concern is that all that’s going to get out of this report … will implicate the Wuhan BSL4 [biosafety level 4 lab] in COVID-19. Well, that’s fine with me. But what about the American involvement here?
“And this was funded by Tony Fauci and Francis Collins at NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] and NIH. Those should be in this legislation too, if we really wanted to get to the bottom of what happened here.”
Boyle and Husseini told The Defender there are numerous government and private entities whose classified documents should be declassified.
Boyle said these include the University of North Carolina, the National Center for Toxicological Research, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School, the U.S. Agency for International Development, EcoHealth Alliance and the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick.
Husseini noted that state governments and private institutions also are likely to possess important information that the COVID-19 Origin Act does not cover. These include Scripps Research, Tulane University and the Wellcome Trust.”
The Wellcome Trust is headed by Jeremy Farrar, now chief scientist for the World Health Organization. “Farrar played a central role in disseminating the propaganda line that COVID could not have lab origins in early 2020,” Husseini said.
U.S. Right to Know sued the University of North Carolina, which is publicly owned, after it failed to respond to the watchdog group’s FOIA requests.
Husseini said the COVID-19 Origin Act “doesn’t even instruct the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] to declassify what it knows about other Chinese government institutions like the Chinese CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].”
Husseini told The Defender :
“Since [Fauci] retired, the system has seemingly skillfully tried to put the deranged stance of the last three years into the rearview mirror hoping people will forget the massive propaganda.”
Boyle told The Defender that “from this legislation, it does appear they’re trying to pin it all on China.”
Husseini, noting that “China may well have major culpability,” said this is not the same as full or exclusive culpability, which is what the U.S. government may now be attempting to establish.
Husseini wrote that “a general anti-China agenda, has taken primacy and is part of a dynamic which ‘ultimately lets’ U.S. institutions and ‘U.S. biowarfare off the hook.’”
He told The Defender :
“There are two pillars of the U.S. establishment here — one wants to polarize at some level with China and the other wants to ensure the U.S. government continues its discovery of bioweapons agents.
“For the establishment to be maintained, both those strains need to be maintained.”
According to Husseini, this may explain why the bill passed both houses with seemingly little debate. It passed the Senate with “unanimous consent,” and subsequently passed the House in a unanimous vote.
Husseini noted that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a member of the House Rules Committee, even put forth a rule “to ensure passage of Hawley’s bill.”
Husseini said Biden, who hasn’t yet said if he will sign the bill, has a few options he may be considering, telling The Defender :
“I see no sign of actual opposition from the Biden administration and I suspect this is all being done in coordination with the director of National Intelligence, as were the reports in the Wall Street Journal that drove this narrative.
“It’s possible Biden wants to appear reluctant on this and I suppose Biden could veto it and get an override so he could pose as being conciliatory to the Chinese or the like.”
Husseini said that “with the collapse of the completely fictional Daszak narrative in the late Spring and Summer of 2021 … a backup narrative has been put forward, especially through the Wall Street Journal,” whose report on the Department of Energy pivoting toward the “lab leak theory” was co-written by Michael Gordon, “who with Judy Miller perpetrated the Iraq weapons of mass destruction fraud on the U.S. public.”
He also blamed wide swaths of the independent media, particularly left-leaning outlets, for going along with establishment efforts to discredit the theory that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Much of ‘the Left’ has basically done everything to kill lab origin — and effectively made it a right-wing issue,” Husseini said.
According to Husseini, those who long promoted the Chinese response to COVID-19 and who now are supporting the push to frame China, are pushing for a world “that combines the worst aspects of the U.S. — corrupt corporate capitalism — with the worst aspects of Chinese society: explicit authoritarianism.”
“The pandemic, it can hardly be ignored, helped isolate people from one another, helped restrict borders, was an excuse for massive civil liberties restrictions — all things useful to the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ agenda,” said Husseini. “This is another reason that intentional release should be seriously examined.”
Lab leak or lab origin?
Husseini said he prefers the term “lab origin theory” over “lab leak theory.”
“I see no good reason to make assumptions,” Husseini said. “‘Leak’ assumes a mistake. It could have been a mistake, but why presume it?”
Boyle adopted a similar view, although he noted that the language of the COVID-19 Origin Act does not mention either term.
“It does not refer to a lab leak,” he said. “It doesn’t say ‘leak’ at all. It says ‘originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’ Obviously, there could be different interpretations of why it originated there. I still believe it was a leak, but this does leave open why it might have originated there.”
Boyle reiterated his longstanding belief that “COVID-19 is an offensive biological warfare weapon with gain-of-function properties” and called for the halting of gain-of-function research.
According to Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, Congress’ reluctance to declassify documents that may implicate U.S. government entities in the origins of COVID-19 is reflective of the massive amounts of federal money spent on biological weapons research.
“They’re not doing that because the U.S. government agencies and scientists involved in the development of COVID-19 [have received] massive sums of money,” Boyle said. “We’ve been devoted to developing offensive biological warfare programs since after Sept. 11, 2001 … I’ve been speaking out about this publicly for years.”
Husseini told The Defender :
“Biowarfare is a deniable weapon, which makes disclosure of documents key. Another reason why the Hawley bill limiting disclosure may well signal a massive coverup in plain sight.”
In a pair of tweets Sunday, British Member of Parliament Andrew Bridgen said he received information from U.S. government sources indicating that the U.S. Department of Defense and the Fort Detrick research facility “were responsible for both the virus and the vaccines” and that “criminal proceedings” may follow.
Bridgen did not clarify which sources provided him with this information or who might face such criminal proceedings. At the March 8 Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Robert Redfield said COVID-19 was “engineered” and blamed gain-of-function research for “the greatest pandemic our world has seen.”
However, Redfield stopped short of explicitly calling for a full ban on such activities, calling instead for a moratorium.
Boyle told The Defender “all this gain-of-function so-called ‘research’ has to be terminated immediately with legislation by Congress … The only way to protect ourselves is to terminate it immediately. No moratorium.”
“There was a moratorium” during the Barack Obama presidency, said Boyle, “and Fauci undermined the moratorium by outsourcing the work through the EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan BSL4 [laboratory]. So, a moratorium is worthless. We have to terminate all gain-of-function research everywhere. It has to be prohibited, to be made criminal.”
The Defender reached out to the offices of Hawley and Braun, Turner and Bridgen for comment, but did not receive a response as of press time.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Did US raise a false flag on Nord Stream blasts?
BY BRADLEY K. MARTIN | ASIA TIMES | MARCH 9, 2023
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said an odd thing on March 7 when TASS asked him to compare his version of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline explosions (US Navy divers did it, he had reported February 8) with a newly released version from the New York Times and German media that points to non-governmental Ukrainians as culprits.
“I don’t want to get into it,” Hersh replied to the Russian wire service. “You should decide for yourself. It’s up to you.” The TASS reporter persisted, asking if Hersh thought the New York Times account had come in response to Hersh’s own investigation. He gave the same reply, saying people should come to their own conclusions.
That was pretty clever. Read both versions and you may conclude that they could fit together to point to a plausible account of how, as war raged over Ukraine, three pipelines supplying Germany’s gas supply from Russia were blown up before Vladimir Putin could use their existence to try to lure Germany out of the pro-Ukraine camp. Before the war, over half of Germany’s gas imports came from Russia.
Assemble a whole from the two versions and you might come up with this: On US President Joe Biden’s orders, US government covert types put together and with Norwegian help carried out the operation (that’s Hersh’s story); to avoid detection, they left some clues pointing elsewhere, to Ukrainians or “pro-Ukrainians” – the main clue mentioned so far being that the yacht from which the divers worked could be traced back to a yacht-rental company in Poland, a company owned by Ukrainians.
The German media account
What you might end up suspecting is a false flag.
Die Zeit, a leading German newspaper that is part of a media investigative consortium that talked with officials in several countries to put together its narrative, acknowledges the possibility thusly: “Even if traces lead to Ukraine, the investigators have not yet been able to find out who commissioned the suspected group of perpetrators. In international security circles, it is not ruled out that it could also be a false flag operation.”
The paper hastens to add that investigators “have apparently not found evidence that confirms such a scenario.” But “the nationalities of the perpetrators are apparently unclear” since they used “professionally forged passports.”
Die Zeit narrows the gang down to “a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman.” Functionally, they were “a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor.”
Like the New York Times, the German media outlets suggest that the demolition crew consisted of Ukrainian civilians from a non-governmental “commando” force opposed to the Russian invasion.
There’s no point in asking for a smoking gun at this point. His critics point out that Hersh – who has acknowledged he opposed NATO expansion into the former Soviet Union and who is not known to be a fan of allied efforts to help Ukraine fight the war – based his own account on a single unnamed US government source. Likewise, the German media organizations that make up the investigative consortium name no sources.
Die Zeit reports that “a Western secret service is said to have sent a tip to European partner services in the autumn, shortly after the destruction,” talking about Ukrainian commando responsibility for the destruction. “After that, there are said to have been further intelligence indications that a pro-Ukrainian group could be responsible.”
A Kremlin spokesperson on March 8 was having none of it, telling journalists that “Western media reports which exonerate NATO state actors from involvement in the explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines have the hallmarks of a synchronized misinformation campaign.”
The Hersh version
Hersh’s version is that US Navy divers, “operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”
Remarkable for its detail, the Hersh account claims that “Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back-and-forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.”
The debate and preparations proceeded from December 2021 when Russia was marshaling its troops, preparing to strike Ukraine from Belarus and Crimea, Hersh writes. “As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia,” he notes.
The interagency task force thus assembled “was initially skeptical of the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unanswered questions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heavily patrolled by the Russian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cover for a diving operation,” Hersh writes.
“‘It would be a goat fuck,’ the agency was told. Throughout ‘all of this scheming,’ the source said, ‘some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”’
“Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s interagency group: ‘We have a way to blow up the pipelines.’ What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, ‘If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.’”
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland gave a similar warning, Hersh says, and lower-ranking officials were concerned by what they viewed as their seniors’ indiscretion.
The operation was headquartered in Norway, whose navy, Hersh says,
was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta-class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.
As cover, Hersh writes, the Americans had Sixth Fleet planners add to the annual naval maneuvers, already scheduled for that time and place, a research and development exercise involving “NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them… The C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22.”
After a decent interval of three months,
on September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission…
In the immediate aftermath of the pipeline bombing, the American media treated it like an unsolved mystery. Russia was repeatedly cited as a likely culprit, spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House – but without ever establishing a clear motive for such an act of self-sabotage, beyond simple retribution… No major American newspaper dug into the earlier threats to the pipelines made by Biden and Undersecretary of State Nuland.
Fact-checkers and Hersh
Critics found what they said were some errors in Hersh’s version. Here is Wikipedia on that:
Hersh wrote that NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg had been cooperating with US intelligence services since the Vietnam War and has been cleared ever since. At the time the Vietnam War ended, Stoltenberg was 16 years old, and he had participated during the peak of the Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in Norway. In 1985, Stoltenberg was part of the Workers’ Youth League in Norway, when the Labor Party was working to withdraw Norway from NATO.
Hersh’s article said the US divers who planted the explosives had operated from a Norwegian Alta-class minesweeper. The Norwegian Defence Forces said no Norwegian Alta-class mine sweepers had participated in BALTOPS 22 and were not in the vicinity of the explosions during the exercise.
Regarding Hersh’s allegations against the Norwegian P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane, Lieutenant Colonel Vegard Norstad Finberg of the Norwegian armed forces said the Norwegian P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane is a brand new plane that has never been in an operational operation, and has only flown test flights in Norwegian airspace, and has never been over the Baltic Sea…
In the German Bundestag, members of parliament from the government disputed Hersh’s credibility and urged that public discussion of the topic be minimized for security reasons; opposition members of parliament from AfD and Die Linke initiated a parliamentary debate on February 10 about Hersh’s allegations, with Die Linke MP Sevim Dağdelen arguing that the government seemed uninterested in clarifying the truth about the bombings.
If the divers’ platform wasn’t an Alta-class minesweeper, then was it a yacht rented from a Ukrainian-owned company in Poland – the vessel the German media/European intel account mentions?
The German account tells us that the saboteurs on their rented yacht proceeded to the dive location on September 6, 2022, from the German Baltic Sea port of Rostock after loading their equipment aboard there from a delivery truck. Rostok’s a long day’s sail (325 nautical miles) from Gdynia, the major Polish port on the Baltic (in case that’s where, in Poland, the Ukrainian-owned yacht rental company is situated).
The New York Times
Disclaimer here: In my 54 years in the news business, I have generally avoided asking spooks for help. I have nothing against them and realize they are colleagues of sorts, but I can recall only a couple of cases when I sought their help. They have their jobs and I have mine. I certainly don’t rush to get their version of events whenever something happens. I assume their version is whatever their agencies have told them should be their version so I prefer to spend my time getting my own version from more direct sources.
That may help to explain why the New York Times piece bothers me. The reporters – maybe the spooks are their beat and they have to get along, or else? – seem overeager to peddle Washington’s version:
Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. They have opposed the project for years, calling it a national security threat because it would allow Russia to sell gas more easily to Europe.
I’d advise checking your wallet if you hear from your pipe-smoking spook source that “officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals or some combination of the two. US officials said no American or British nationals were involved.”
Would you credit “US officials who have reviewed the new intelligence” and who say that “the explosives were most likely planted with the help of experienced divers who did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services”?
After all that Seymour Hersh has told you?
Well, at least they have a policy at the New York Times permitting them to emulate Seymour Hersh (born 1937, a real veteran with a record) and stick to anonymous sources:
Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
Whew. What a relief.
Bradley K Martin is a veteran foreign correspondent.


