Patrick Armstrong — No, Your Intelligence Is Actually Bad. Very Bad

Wishful thinking replaces intelligence.

Strategic Culture Foundation
No, Your Intelligence Is Actually Bad. Very Bad

Patrick Armstrong

See also

As recent events in Syria suggest, Russia has found an effective way of keeping aggressive Western powers at bay with state-of-the-art missile systems and electronic warfare methods – much of it reportedly developed by young scientists and on the cheap…

"Like I said in my address to the Federal Assembly, we create second-to-none and state-of-the-art arms systems. One of those systems was created by a team of very young scientists. I asked them where they came from and how they could invent such things. They said that they united into a scientific group after graduation and developed the world's most powerful arms system in seven years," Putin said during a plenary meeting of the Russian Union of Rectors.

Perhaps even more amazing than the brief amount of time that was required for Russia to turn around its military situation, with the help of young scientists, is the fact that it is now able to concentrate its budget resources on infrastructure and the economy....

David vs. Goliath: Russia Puts the Brakes on NATO Aggression – Without an Expensive Arms Race

Robert Bridge

Claire Zillman — How Obama’s National Security Advisor Landed at the Center of Trump’s Wiretapping Claims

What we know so far is that Susan Rice did receive unredacted intelligence reports in which US citizens names were revealed ("unmasked"). 

Rice admits this and adding that it was not illegal to do so and no political use was made of the information. She points out that "unmasking" is not leaking, which is illegal, and she asserts that she did not leak anyone's name.

Who leaked Michael Flynn's name to David Ignatius, who then wrote in the New York Times about Flynn's meetings with the Russian ambassador, remains unknown. 

Since this information improperly identifying Flynn publicly was obtained through intelligence, it is a felony offense punishable by a prison sentence of up to ten years.

Presently, I have not seen a comprehensive non-partisan objective analysis of the situation. The alternative is piecing together a scenario using different sources.

This is complicated by Trump proponents and the Obama/Clinton proponents spinning the story oppositionally and sometime in a contradictory way. So it is difficult to tease out where the truth may lie in these narratives whose purpose is to dominate the news cycle.

It has been established, however, that the Obama administration had specific intelligence about the Trump team, which had previously not been established. What they did with it is so far unclear, as it the identity of the leaker(s). 

Fortune
How Obama’s National Security Advisor Landed at the Center of Trump’s Wiretapping Claims
Claire Zillman

Jeremy Scahill — James Clapper Has a Classified Blog. It’s Called “Intercept.”

Taking James Clapper to the woodshed over civil liberties.

And yes, no joke. Clapper's classified blog is called "Intercept."

The Intercept
James Clapper Has a Classified Blog. It’s Called “Intercept.”
Jeremy Scahill

Ruptly — Putin laughs at US intel - "I read all of your instructions!" [Video]

39 second clip with subtitles. Pretty funny.

Fort Russ
Putin laughs at US intel - "I read all of your instructions!" [Video]

Ruptly - Translated by Inessa Sinchougova

Lee Fang — In Undisclosed CIA Investments, Social Media Mining Looms Large

FYI. Some intelligence on the intel community.

The Intercept 

In Undisclosed CIA Investments, Social Media Mining Looms Large
Lee Fang

Nancy Hanover — The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America

Long but fascinating. Factoid: Gloria Steinem was a CIA operative as a student.

The detailed and engrossing 2008 book, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, by Hugh Wilford, investigates the CIA’s ideological struggle from 1947 to 1967 to win “hearts and minds” for US capitalism and prosecute the Cold War.

It was a dirty business. The CIA devised schemes to create or utilize existing social organizations, phony pass-through entities, universities, various media, artist groups, foundations and charities to service its propaganda wars—attempting to place a “progressive” and even “humanitarian” veneer upon America’s expanding grip.

Despite the passage of time since the book’s release, it remains a pertinent read for its exposure of the modus operandi of the CIA’s ideological campaigns and the role of a section of the liberal intelligentsia in supporting it. It is an eye-opener, particularly for a younger generation that has been subjected to a decades-long, non-stop attempt to whitewash the CIA and US militarism. One gets a picture of the ferociously antidemocratic and reactionary operations of US imperialism and its intelligence apparatus, a clear demonstration of the thoroughly criminal and deceitful nature of American capitalism.

Most important of all, the reader comes away with a sense of the immense significance attributed by the American ruling elite to the ideological struggle against socialism.
The author correctly emphasizes, “If anything, these practices have intensified in recent years, with the ‘war on terror’ recreating the conditions of total mobilization that prevailed in the first years of the Cold War.” He adds that the agency is “a growing force on campus.”[3]

The metaphor—a “Mighty Wurlitzer”—was coined by Frank Wisner, the head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a paramilitary and psychological operations group created in 1948, which was folded into the CIA in 1951. He prided himself on directing the network of organizations to play any propaganda tune on demand, likening it to the world-famous theater organ.

The Dark Side

The first target for covert recruitment was émigrés from Germany, Eastern Europe and the USSR. Wilford refers here to operation “PAPERCLIP,” codename for the funneling of ex-Nazis with military or technical expertise into the US. He briefly notes the employment of Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s chief of military intelligence on the Eastern Front, whose network was “folded into” American and, several years later, German intelligence.

Wilford’s unfortunate tendency to sanitize US imperialism repeatedly undermines his exposures, a case in point being his description of the Gehlen connection. For example, rather than Wilford’s rather dry mention of it, Joseph Trento, author of The Secret History of the CIA, describes the same facts with more appropriate emphasis:

“… Gehlen convinced [Alan] Dulles [the first civilian director of the CIA, formerly with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of Policy Coordination] that the Unites States must provide protection for thousands of high-ranking Nazis. … ‘Nothing was more important than the recruitment of these Nazis who had escaped all over Europe. … You have to remember they were considered the ultimate anti-Communists … the American authorities were willing to recruit any useful Nazi …’”

Trento cites Robert T. Crowley, who played a significant role in managing the Nazis for the US. Trento concludes with the politically incriminating appraisal: “This partnership between the ex-Nazis and the OSS/CIA dominated US activity against the Soviet bloc for the next three decades.” [5]…

Early Media Involvement

From today’s vantage point, the suppression of information and collusion of journalists with the CIA is hardly a revelation. Nonetheless, the book points to the depth of this ongoing relationship from the earliest period of CIA operations.

In 1977, Carl Bernstein calculated that there were about 400 journalists who had worked for the CIA since 1952. But Wilford aptly notes that the number of individual journalists processing government stories was far less significant than the institutional collaboration between the agency and the major news media.

The author points out that Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, was a good friend of CIA Director Allen Dulles and signed a secrecy agreement with the agency. He says that under the terms of this arrangement, the Times provided at least ten CIA officers with cover as reporters or clerical staff in its foreign bureaus, while genuine employees were encouraged to merely spy. Dulles cultivated the media—they were excellent sources of information abroad.…

Wilford writes that Columbia Broadcasting System’s news president was in such constant telephone contact with CIA headquarters that, tired of leaving his office for the proverbial pay phone, he installed a private line to bypass the switchboard.…

There were also the news magazines. Like the New York Times, Henry Luce’s Time provided CIA officers with journalistic credentials. Wilford notes that “overall … the collaboration was extraordinarily successful, so much so it was difficult to tell precisely where the Luce empire’s overseas intelligence network ended and the CIA’s began.”….

 Youth Infiltration

The CIA and NSA also sponsored international youth festivals to “rescue Third World youth from the clutches of communist propagandists.” A leader in this operation was feminist icon Gloria Steinem. She accepted a paid position as director of the Independent Service for Information, “a CIA operation from beginning to end,” according to Wilford, and was made “witting.” Among her compatriots in this group was Zbigniew Brzezinski, at the time a Harvard graduate student, whom she described as “a star member of the Independent Service.”… 

WSWS
The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America

Nancy Hanover

Ray McGovern — Propaganda, Intelligence and MH-17

The former US intelligence analyst smells a rat and tell us why.

The US has sordid history of fixing intelligence and lying about facts. The rush to war in Iraq based on "intelligence" is a classic example.

Is the same thing in the works again?

Without doubt, the U.S. government has evidence that could support or refute any one of those possibilities, but it won’t tell you even in some declassified summary form. Why? Is it somehow unpatriotic to speculate that John Kerry, with his checkered reputation for truth-telling regarding Syria and other foreign crises, chose right off the bat to turn the MH-17 tragedy to Washington’s propaganda advantage, an exercise in “soft power” to throw Putin on the defensive and rally Europe behind U.S. economic sanctions to punish Russia for supporting ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine resisting the new U.S.-arranged political order in Kiev?

By taking a leaf out of the Bush-Cheney-Tony-Blair playbook, Kerry could “fix the intelligence around the policy” of Putin-bashing. Given the anti-Putin bias rampant in the mainstream Western media, that wouldn’t be a hard sell. And, it wasn’t. The “mainstream” stenographers/journalists quickly accepted that “social media” was indeed a dandy source to rely on – and have never pressed the U.S. government to release any of its intelligence data.…

To buttress Kerry’s shaky case, DNI Clapper arranged a flimsy “Government Assessment” – reprising many of Kerry’s references to “social media” – that was briefed to a few hand-picked Establishment reporters two days after Kerry starred on Sunday TV. The little-noticed distinction was that this report was not the customary “Intelligence Assessment” (the genre that has been de rigueur in such circumstances in the past).

The key difference between the traditional “Intelligence Assessment” and this relatively new creation, a “Government Assessment,” is that the latter genre is put together by senior White House bureaucrats or other political appointees, not senior intelligence analysts. Another significant difference is that an “Intelligence Assessment” often includes alternative views, either in the text or in footnotes, detailing disagreements among intelligence analysts, thus revealing where the case may be weak or in dispute.
The absence of an “Intelligence Assessment” suggested that honest intelligence analysts were resisting a knee-jerk indictment of Russia – just as they did after the first time Kerry pulled this “Government Assessment” arrow out of his quiver trying to stick the blame for an Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus on the Syrian government.…

A review of the transcripts of the CBS, NBC, and ABC Sunday follies reveals a remarkable – if not unprecedented — consistency in approach by CBS’s Bob Schieffer, NBC’s David Gregory (ably egged on by Andrea Mitchell), and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, all of whom hewed faithfully to a script apparently given them with two main talking points: (1) blame Putin; and (2) frame the shoot-down as a “wake-up call” (Kerry used the words repeatedly) for European governments to impose tight economic sanctions on Russia.

Was this gambit aimed at Europe as much or more than Russia?

The U.S. had imposed serious economic sanctions on Russia the day before the shoot-down – but the Europeans were hesitant. Yet, in the MH-17 aftermath, both U.S. and European media were filled with outrage against Putin for supposedly murdering 298 innocents.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders, who had been resisting imposing strong economic sanctions because of Germany’s and the European Union’s lucrative trade with Russia, let themselves be bulldozed, just two weeks after the shoot-down, into going along with mutually harmful sanctions that have hurt Russia but also have shaken the EU’s fragile economic recovery.

Kerry recently admitted that European support for the sanctions is breaking down because Europe is getting hurt, just like it expected.

Angela Merkel and other leaders with damaged trade ties with Russia may ultimately demand an explanation. Can it be that it will take current European leaders a couple of years to realize they’ve been had — again?

Consortium News
Propaganda, Intelligence and MH-17

Ray McGovern

During his 27-years as a CIA analyst, [McGovern] served as chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, and prepared and personally conducted early morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In January 2013, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Fort Russ — Head of French military intelligence on the real trouble with NATO

Did US intelligence get it wrong, or was it fixed as in the case of Iraq? You decide.

Here is a brief, but significant, extract from General Christophe Gomart's report to the Assemblée Nationale. General Gomart is head of French Military Intelligence. His complete report, given March 25, 2015, is here.  

Gen. Gomart: “The real difficulty with NATO is that the American intel is in preponderance there, while the French intel is more or less taken for granted, hence the importance for us to supply the NATO commanders with enough information of French origin.

"NATO announced that the Russians were going to invade Ukraine, the while that according to our information at the DRM (Direction du Renseignement Militaire), there was nothing to support this hypothesis — we had in fact stated that the Russians had not deployed either command nor the logistics, that would permit envisaging a military invasion, notably field hospitals, and that the second-line units had been exhibiting no movement.
"The outcome demonstrated that we got it right, since, if any Russian soldiers had been sighted in Ukraine, it would have been a matter of a pressuring maneouvre on Ukrainian president Poroshenko than of any prelude to an invasion."

Fort Russ
Head of French military intelligence on the real trouble with NATO

Translated from French by Tom Winter

Dominique Mosbergen — Ron Paul Says U.S. 'Likely Hiding Truth' About MH17 Crash

Trouble on the anti-government right.

"Questions do remain regarding the serious international incident," Paul wrote last week of the MH17 crash. "Too bad we can’t count on our government to just tell us the truth and show us the evidence. I’m convinced that it knows a lot more than it’s telling us." 

This isn't the first time that Paul has accused the government of spreading "propaganda" following the MH17 crash. As The Hill points out, Paul -- in the days after the tragedy -- accused the Obama administration and the Western media of "join[ing] together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster." He also suggested at the time that the U.S. might be partly to blame for the crash.

The Huffington Post
Ron Paul Says U.S. 'Likely Hiding Truth' About MH17 Crash
Dominique Mosbergen

Robert Parry — Was Putin Targeted for Mid-Air Assassination?

Robert Parry catches us up.

Consortium News
Was Putin Targeted for Mid-Air Assassination?

Robert Parry