Ten years ago Edward Snowden was helped to escape by Wikileaks and to publish his revelations by The Intercept, Guardian, New York Times and others.
In 2023 Jack Texeira is tracked down by UK secret service front Bellingcat in conjunction with the New York Times and in parallel with the Washington Post, not to help him escape or help him publish or tell people his motives, but to help the state arrest him.
Those outlets have accessed a cache of at least 300 additional secret documents in doing so – and have kept them secret, with the exception of a couple of snippets that forward the official state narrative.
That contrast with ten years ago tells a very real and glaring truth. The idea that the legacy media in any way serves the truth or the public interest is now completely buried. The legacy media serves the state, and the state serves the billionaires.
Wikileaks is now so hamstrung by attacks on its finances, personnel and logistics as to be almost inoperable. Propaganda outfit Bellingcat was conceived as a way to counter it, by producing material with the frisson of secret access but actually as an outlet for the security services. An astonishing amount of “liberal opinion” falls for it.
Similarly the Intercept, like the Guardian, was subject to an internal takeover that delivered it entirely into the hands of the neo-conservatives.
Neither the alleged journalists of New York Times, Washington Post, nor Bellingcat did the most basic things a real journalist would do.
They did not contact Texeira, speak to him, ask him to explain his motivation, and look through the other secret material to which he had access, to get Texeira’s view on its meaning and implications, and to publish what in it was in the public interest.
Instead they simply shopped him to the FBI and closed down the remaining documents.
I am not at all surprised by Bellingcat, which is plainly a spook organisation. I hope this enables more people to see through them. But the behaviour of the New York Times and Washington Post is truly shocking. They now see their mission as to serve the security state, not public knowledge.
In the ten years between Snowden and Texeira, the world has changed hugely for the worse. Not only has a huge amount of freedom disappeared, freedom’s former Guardians have been subverted. It has been ten years of disaster.
A cache of twitter images of some of the leaked documents is here. I am not aware of any broader cache – feel free to insert links to any in the comments.
The initial reaction to the leaked documents was to rubbish them with the memes routinely applied to all information embarrassing to the state nowadays – they were either “Russian hacks” or “faked or amended disinformation”.
These attacks were particularly important as the message that came over clearly from these Texeira leaks was precisely the same as that which came over from Daniel Ellsberg’s original Pentagon Papers leak 50 years ago – that the public is being lied to about how the war is going.
(It is worth reflecting that in today’s world the NYT and Washington Post would have condemned Ellsberg and emphasised those bits of the Pentagon Papers which reflect badly on the VietCong).
Ukraine was particularly concerned about US official figures showing Ukrainian casualties much higher, and Russian casualties much lower, than the Ukrainian official figures the US ostensibly endorsed.
I have to say I always find both Ukrainian and Russian casualty figures laughably false. The idea that either side is telling the truth appears to me one that no half-sensible person could entertain. I had presumed that was the general view.
Revelations about the fragility of Ukrainian air defences and supply lines similarly seemed to me a statement of the blindingly obvious.
It is also unhelpful for the US to have revealed that it is actively spying on President Zelensky, as well as allies like South Korea and Israel. But again, this is embarrassing in the sense it is embarrassing if somebody publishes pictures of you on the toilet; it is not that nobody thought you used the toilet.
There is not a diplomat alive who did not know the US does this stuff.
Eventually the media and security services, with Bellingcat in the vanguard, decided the best way forward was to admit the papers are genuine, but only tell us about very selected ones, and then with a positive spin.
So we have stories about how brilliant the US secret services are at penetrating Russian power structures and communications, and how the real danger from the leaks is revealing to the Russians the extent of American success.
That line has been splashed all over legacy and social media these last few days. As the public is being denied the original documents this conclusion is extrapolated from, it is difficult to assess. The journalists of course have not assessed it; they have just copied and pasted the line.
Other helpful snippets for the security services are published, such as an assessment that the UN Secretary General is pro-Russian, or standard stuff on North Korean nuclear ambitions. In the last week it is noticeable that, since original documents stopped surfacing into public view, nothing has been published that does not serve US propaganda narratives.
There remains the mystery that the sources of these documents seem particularly diverse – in particular some being apparently internal CIA – for an intelligence officer in the Air National Guard to access, but it is not impossible.
Jack Texeira is at the centre of this puzzle but remains the missing piece. We have heard nothing from him. A rather unconvincing interview with a suspiciously fluent, pixeled out acquaintance grassing him up to the Washington Post stated that he was a right wing patriot.
Texeira has been portrayed both as some kind of rampant Trump supporter incensed at the state, and as an inadequate jock revealing documents just to boast to fellow gaming nerds. We should remain suspicious of attempts to characterise him: I am acutely aware of media portrayals of Julian Assange which are entirely untrue.
It is a shame the Washington Post, New York Times, Guardian and Bellingcat each had no interest whatsoever in the journalistic pursuit of the truth behind this extraordinary episode. We live entirely in security states: there is no doubt about it.
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Hi there
I’ve saved what’s available here in the hopes that it is saved for posterity in our forum library in this directory, along with a contribution from – I think – a Korean commentator who has offered their insights:
https://avalonlibrary.net/?dir=Ukraine/2022_Russian_invasion_%28Operation-Z%29/%5BLEAK%5D_NATO_War_plan_documents_April_06_2023
From looking into the belly of social media and commentary sections:
Some people suggest an in-fight between the Nuland-ers on one side (team Biden) and the Obama-Clinton-team, which would be lead by Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
Which thus would suggest: Avril Haines to have orchestrated the leaks to weaken the Nuland-grip of the Ukraine “narrative”.
A power struggle of this kind might explan many things, as of the rather contradictory nature of the leaks:
Open source material mixed with highly classified.
Material highly critical of US UKR policy (which is directed against Nuland basically) but also hurting US internal intelligence towards allies as South Korea which would hurt many US insiders.
In how far the CIA director fits into this, I don´t know exactly.
But for lack of time I am rather skimming the commentary sections trying to at least filter what might appear to make sense.
Further suggestions:
The platforms used to spread the leaks by those “kids” (was it Discord?) were possibly set up or deeply compromised by Bellingcat.
On the other hand there is the overlying question of the 2024 election.
None of the people involved on either said of this operation seems to have any interest in Biden losing such an election/nomination. So far. (Any real alternative out there from Dems´ POV?)
So: how to – if done so – pull this thing off – getting rid of some of Biden´s crazy allies, without hurting this “King Lear” himself? I wonder.
For some reason I see no comparison to Snowden or Ellsberg. That material was genuine a far as it could be back then.
Those two men were whistleblowers in the best sense of the word. And the material leaked mirrored that.
Different times.
And besides – If I were to accomplish such a leak in an post-Snowdean era – I would prepare my escape well. Anyone who watches movies know this.
This kid however was reading in his garden I heard when the arrest took place. Come on.
And here the NYT text link –
“Read the criminal complaint against Jack Teixeira”
https://archive.is/b8t6e#selection-213.0-213.49
the direct link is here:
https://archive.is/o/b8t6e/https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/texiera-docs/c61beef6e5e4bfdb/full.pdf
(wasn´t finished editing the above text. sry.)
Is his leak to be considered as an act by a whistleblower? Did he release it in part or in full because he wanted to expose some hidden truths to thegeneral public?
Interestingly the Pentagon estimates Russian deaths at 17000, that is of course a terrible number for the Russians but quite smaller than the propaganda claim we have heard in the past year that 100k or even 200k of Russian soldiers have been killed.
“3. The leaks challenge longstanding claims by the Pentagon and the Ukrainian military about casualties. A document entitled “Top Secret – Status of the Conflict as of March 01, 2023” estimates total Russian losses could be up to 16,000-17,500 killed in action, and 61,000-71,500 on the Ukrainian side.
“Pentagon Leaks: 5 Key Revelations”
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230412/pentagon-leaks-5-key-revelations-1109396000.html
…and 71000 ukrainian deaths (of an ukrainian army of some 900k), not to downplay deaths here, but so much for the propaganda claim that there is a genocide in Ukraine.
> but so much for the propaganda claim that there is a genocide in Ukraine.
“Genocide” doesn’t mesan combat casualties. Theft of cultural artifacts, and the forced deportations and forced adoptions (of which the Russian government has bragged) *are* genocide.
Jimmeh
Then there was a genocide in Iraq, Palestine or for that matter Donbas by US/UK/NATO/UKraine/Israel. Agree?
Not to mention Vietnam!
Operation Babylift was the name given to the mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States and other western countries (including Australia, France, West Germany, and Canada) at the end of the Vietnam War (see also the Fall of Saigon), on April 3–26, 1975.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Babylift
Of course children are being evacuated during war or do you want the kids to stay and risk being killed?
You really believe Ukraine, that have shelled Donbas for 9 years now give a friggin hoot about kids being “kidnapped”?
> Then there was a genocide in Iraq, Palestine or for that matter Donbas by US/UK/NATO/UKraine/Israel. Agree?
That’s an extraordinarly mixed-up observation, so no, I don’t agree.
Regarding your comment about the Vietnam war, you’re engaging in whataboutism, a.k.a. trying to distract from the issue at hand. I won’t play. And I’m certainly not going to try to defend the historical records of the USA or the UK. But that’s not what this discussion is about. Try to keep up!
> Of course children are being evacuated during war or do you want the kids to stay and risk being killed?
Russia could have enabled those kids to be evacuated to Ukrainian territory, through humanitarian corridors. But the Russians shelled the “humanitarian corridors”.
The kids are being forcibly adopted by Russian families. That is directly genocide, and the Russian government says it’s proud of it. Putin has repeatedly and publicly stated that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people do not exist, and the Ukrainian language is simply Russian as spoken by ill-educated folk. His clear intention is to eradicate the Ukrainians as a people, which is the very definition of genocide. That is why he has been indicted for genocide by the ICC.
Jimmeh
Nope it is not “mixed up”, it is the same, In Iraq, Palestine, Donbas, (and Vietnam) looting, raping, destruction, forcible ethnic cleansing, killing, denying their right to speak their language freely etc have occured time and time again by US/UK/Nato/Israel/Ukraine.
On “whataboutism”
The reason why people bring up other similar wars is of course to point out the hypocrisy – you criticize Russia but deep down you have no problem defending if US/UK/Nato/Ukraine did or do it today. And you proved that well by denying the genocide label on Iraq, Palestine, Donbas.
Evacuating them to Ukraine, what are you talking about? These regions have been shelled for 9 years and you want Russia to hand over children to the perpetrator? Donbas region have also declared independence, from Ukraine, years ago. Of course they want nothing to do with Ukraine and obviously wont let their children off to Kiev.
Now you are just rambling, of course Russia recognize Ukraine as a state. You get it mixed up with the language. It is the russian language, it’s the russian media, it’s the russian-aligned christians that are discriminated against, not in Russia, but in Ukraine.
Evacuation of civilian population from combat zone can’t be considered “forced deportation”, the intent is obviously different. Evacuated people will return, should they wish so, after the combat ends and their homes rebuilt, and Rome Statute (which neither Russia nor Ukraine is a signatory to anyway) allows it. As for adoptions, there is no evidence of “forced” adoptions nor of them being on mass scale; by October 2022 there were 350 adoptions. The charges make no sense whatsoever.
> As for adoptions, there is no evidence of “forced” adoptions nor of them being on mass scale; by October 2022 there were 350 adoptions. The charges make no sense whatsoever.
It is ILLEGAL to deport people from their own country, whether it is a warzone or not. Having Ukrainian kids “adopted” by families in another country, that don’t speak their language, can only be seen as forced adoption. Apart from the fact that these are children, and can’t be assumed to have volunteered for deportation and adoption by foreigners, the very reason they are in a warzone in the first place is because Russia started an illegal war of conquest.
You appear to have internalized Russian propaganda. Could it be that you are watching too much domestic Russian TV news?
Jimmeh
Dont speak their own language? Jesus, you do not know that majority of ukrainians, not to speak of eastern ukrainians, know and millions speak Russian daily?
“You appear to have internalized Russian propaganda. Could it be that you are watching too much domestic Russian TV news?”
says the commenter who appears to have internalised NATO propaganda without doing even the most basic checks. FYI, CNN spoke to Ukranian refugees in Russia and failed to find any that complained of being deported – or do you consider CNN “domestic Russian TV news”? Also refugees who went to Russia initially have been allowed to go on to the West, which seems strange if they had initially been deported.
Rubbish. These kids were not “forcefully adopted”, they are quite happy. A journalist from UK (as I recall but he may be from some other West European country) loaded a video on youtube where he interviewed these “kidnapped” kids in a camp near Moscow where they study classical music. They consider themselves Russian but will be free to go back if they wish when hostilities are over.
> A journalist from UK (as I recall but he may be from some other West European country) loaded a video on youtube
You’re citing some unnamed show on Youtube, posted by an unnamed “journalist” operating inside Russia. You do realize that only journalists that follow the Russian government line are allowed visas nowadays? Youtube is not universally acclaimed as a reliable source of verified information.
OK, OK. This cannot be true because this never, ever can be true.
“You’re citing some unnamed show on Youtube, posted by an unnamed “journalist” operating inside Russia.”
says the commenter who doesn’t even bother to cite sources at all, but trots out “facts” as if their bare word was good enough.
The number 17,000 actually came from open Russian sources. There is a volunteer group who counts KIA based on newspaper obituaries, social media reports, photographs from cemeteries and other sources like this. As I recall, the 17+ thousand number was released back in December, and has been increase to 20+ thousand by now.
Bellingcop…busted again
only a minor item from the leaks:
But I find this very troubling:
The NYT wrote about this once 4 days ago:
On Sept. 29th 2022 one RU SU-27 fired at a British surveillance plane over the Black Sea.
The RU pilot pressed the button BUT the missile apparently did not go off simply for a malefunction.
Otherwise the British plane (that has space for up to 30 people) might have gone down.
Now consider what happened after that silly rocket landed on an open field in Poland.
Of course NATO could have covered up such an “act of war” to avoid WWIII.
Here the entire NYT article, the link seems not to work properly:
“(…)
Miscommunication Nearly Led to Russian Jet Shooting Down
British Spy Plane, U.S. Officials Say
Recently leaked intelligence documents called the incident, last year, a near shoot down.
Officials said it was more serious than originally reported.
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eric Schmitt
April 12, 2023
LONDON — A Russian fighter jet fired a missile at a manned British surveillance aircraft flying over the Black Sea in September but the munition malfunctioned, according to U.S. defense officials and a recently leaked classified U.S. intelligence report. The incident was far more serious than originally portrayed and could have amounted to an act of war.
According to two U.S. defense officials, the Russian pilot had misinterpreted what a radar operator on the ground was saying to him and thought he had permission to fire. The pilot, who had locked on the British aircraft, fired, but the missile did not launch properly.
In October, Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, described the close call in a briefing to Parliament members as “potentially dangerous” after the Russian fighter jet “released a missile in the vicinity” of the British aircraft. But one of the leaked documents said the Sept. 29 event was a “near-shoot down.”
The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
The dance between surveillance aircraft from the United States and other NATO countries, and Russian fighter jets over the Black Sea has played out for years, especially after Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Tensions have only grown as Ukraine increasingly relies on Western-gathered intelligence to push back against the Russian invasion that began last year.
Last month, a Russian warplane knocked into a U.S. surveillance drone over the Black Sea, hitting the drone’s propeller and causing it to crash in international waters. The collision was the first known physical contact between the Russian and American militaries since the war in Ukraine started.
The two U.S. defense officials with direct knowledge of the near shoot down in September confirmed the seriousness of the encounter between the British plane — a four-engine aircraft known as an RC-135 Rivet Joint — and two Russian Su-27 fighter jets. The British aircraft is often manned with a crew of around 30 people and is capable of intercepting radio traffic.
The defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the British Rivet Joint was listening to intercepted communications between a Russian radar controller on the ground and one of the pilots of the Russian Su-27s dispatched to monitor the aircraft.
The British Rivet Joint was in international airspace off the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea.
The pilots of the Russian aircraft were not in visual range of the British patrol but were equipped with missiles capable of hitting it, the officials said.
One of the officials who was briefed on the encounter called it “really, really scary.”
Asked to comment on The New York Times’s reporting and the leaked document, a British defense official said in a statement, “A significant proportion of the content of these reports is untrue, manipulated, or both. We strongly caution against anybody taking the veracity of these claims at face value and would also advise them to take time to question the source and purpose of such leaks.”
In his October briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Wallace said that he took his concerns following the incident to the Russian military, including Russia’s minister of defense, Sergei K. Shoigu. The Kremlin indicated there had been a “technical malfunction,” Mr. Wallace said, adding that he did not consider the incident a deliberate escalation by the Russians, according to a Reuters report at the time.
Mr. Wallace said that in the wake of the incident, surveillance flights were initially suspended, but then were restarted with fighter aircraft escorts. Now, British Rivet Joints patrolling over the Black Sea fly with at least one Typhoon fighter jet alongside.
The September episode has eerie echoes of a time during the Cold War when Soviet fighter jets scrambled to intercept what they feared was a hostile aircraft that was actually Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 passenger jet. The airliner had accidentally flown into Soviet airspace, and after a Soviet pilot gave a partial description of the passenger jet to a ground radar station, he was given permission to fire.
All 269 people aboard were killed after two air-to-air missiles slammed into the aircraft.
With tensions high and miscommunication a staple of wartime environments, NATO surveillance flights are now flying farther away from Crimea than required by international law. Instead of as close as 12 miles off the coast, which counts as international airspace, the U.S. military is currently observing a wider limit of about 46 miles, which is described in one of the leaked documents as a “SECDEF Directed Standoff.”
The classified documents also point to a number of air-to-air incidents involving Russian aircraft and NATO planes and drones that occurred since the Sept. 29 near shoot down. From Oct. 1 to Feb. 22, British, French and American flights reacted to six different events in which Russian aircraft approached their patrols, from distances of six nautical miles to just 100 feet.
(…)”
Their gloves are off. Revelations by Snowden, Assange etc aside, the watershed moment was when the liberal world was caught in surprise, fear and loathing by “the madness of Trump and Brexit”, as they might call it (or Trump, Brexit and Putin even more recently). They think they’re smarter than anybody else, and they believe they know what’s good for themselves and for everybody else. They also think they’re in a fight to the death to protect the world from pretty much anybody who doesn’t agree with them about pretty much everything. The end justifies the means they tell themselves as they lie, cheat and weaponise identity politics in the hopes of demonstrating to everyone else (who they believe to be variously mad, gullible, or stupid enough to have erroneously wandered down a non-liberal path) the error of their Trump, Putin or Brexit-loving ways.
In many ways modern liberalism has become the monster it hates when it sees it elsewhere, but unsurprisingly it is unable to see this in the mirror. So we shouldn’t expect anything other than relentless propaganda from the NYT, Guardian etc, as most people on this site already recognise. The liberal media is indeed primarily legacy media. No wonder they’re fighting so hard to control the internet and what can be said on it.
Very important observation. Incredible really that once-campaigning newspapers are reduced to hunting whistleblowers for the carceral state. The NYT, Washington Post, Guardian etc were always corporate, establishment institutions but for the sake of their credibility they at least pretended separation from the intelligence agencies.
I fear virtually all alternative so-called left media here and in the US – not just the Intercept – is also security-state adjacent. Jacobin & Counterpunch seem to exist to coralle leftists into supporting the bourgeois-corporate Democratic party & US proxy wars from Syria to Ukraine. Here Novara Media & Owen Jones, having helped to destroy the only chance of change we are likely to get, are suggesting it would be irresponsible & self-indulgent not to vote for the Savile-Epstein party at the next election. People who once bemoaned the absence of left media have been getting an important lesson in being careful what you wish for.
“..the Saville-Epstein party..” – that sounds like quite a party! Can anyone go or does one need a “special” invitation?
No, but seriously, I foresee a very bright future for you Xavi, in the corporate branding industry. You seem to have a way with words that would allow consumers, sorry voters, to pick their way through the extreme complexities of the current democratic process.
So in answer to the “Who do we vote for now?” question, a uniparty called “the Saville-Epstein party”. I’m just glad that I am not as young as I once was – what’s already spent can’t be stolen. We all know who will pay, if this uniparty continues it’s august rule.
UE
Why thanks! I should clarify though I was referring only to the so-called Labour party with the term Savile (Sir Keir)-Epstein (Lord Peter) party, although of course we have indeed returned to having a uniparty in this country.
Try the Grayzone, Consortium News, MintPress News, Declassified UK, Jonathan Cook’s Blog, the Jimmy Dore Show, Col. Douglas Macgregor, Scott Ritter, The Empire Files, Chris Hedges, Unlimited Hangout with Whitney Webb, and even OffGuardian, Redacted News, the Last American Vagabond, and the Corbett Report. It’s well known the Intercept became an establishment asset a few years ago.
Surely Greenwald should be on this list if you’re going to have Jimmy Dore and Corbett… Greenwald has his problems, including being lured into flirtation with the US far right and Fox News, but his analysis of this leak has been pretty solid.
Ah thanks Tom, I am aware of those. Who I meant by the alternative so-called left media are those acknowledged by & permitted to speak on MSM.
Try You Tube and Colonel Douglas MacGrgor coupled with former US marine Scott Ritter.
The “truth” has been out for several months. These leaks merely confirm the opinions ot these two gentlemen.
Oh, and don’t forget Ray McGovern former US intellgence officer.
George..yes indeed. Jimmy Dore does great exposing of the warmongers too…And I believe he will be on George Galllowy’s show Tonight (starts around 7pm)
Here is a video of Scott Ritter with Ray McGovern – which Colonel Douglas MacGregor put up
Scott Ritter – Ukraine IS LOSING BAKHMUT – 1 hour 48 mins –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmE47VKgXN8&t=188s
Three weeks old. Back in February of last year Ritter was saying that the war was already over, Ukraine had been defeated and it would all be over in a week.
https://www.algora.com/Algora_blog/2022/02/28/must-see-scott-ritter-on-nato-too-weak-to-face-russia
Back in 2003 it was his expert opinion that the US would not be able to capture Bagdad. The guy is in the pay of RT and has zero credibility.
Well, the NATO propaganda narrative, that Russia has already lost, has no more munitions, repeated endlessly since March 2022 is no nearer to the truth. Nobody takes Ritter to be right literally word-for-word, as you insist one should do. Ritter has good experience, but Macgregor is better.
Pears still insists Russia blew up its own pipelines. That’s how much of a stickler for truth and accuracy he is.
Pears
Of course Ukraine have already lost, what we see now is a dragged out war for no reason for neither side, atleast not for the ukrainians which might lose even more land.
And of course everyone anticipated that Russia would do some brutal shock-and-awe and win easily but they have refused to go that route (for reasons I do not know).
Sooner or later Ukraine will have to sit down with Russia and the topics would be the same as they were prior the war.
As far as Scott Ritter is concerned, he have been correct on many things:
Back in 2003: Scott Ritter: How the British Spy Agency MI6 Secretly Misled A Nation Into War With Iraq
https://www.democracynow.org/2003/12/30/scott_ritter_how_the_british_spy
2003: Scott Ritter: Case against Iraq is speculation
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/09/13/ritter.cnna/index.html?related
2003: Scott Ritter
More than 100,000 Iraqis have died – and where is our shame and rage?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/nov/01/usa.iraq
2002:
Former weapons inspector: Iraqi arms “gone” as of 1998
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/09/former-weapons-inspector-iraqi-arms-gone-as-of-1998/
If one looks back at what Scott Ritter was saying a year ago on Consortium news, we find he has not been very accurate. Just a few days before the invasion he said it wouldn’t happen; the EU and NATO wouldn’t find any unity and the Russian army was superior to NATO forces. The Ukrainian army, much of which was regional militia, would offer little resistance. Colonel McGregor also predicted a swift Russian victory. There is no doubt Putin expected the same. The column from Belarus was not the formation one would use if resistance was expected. It also included internal security troops – an indication of the ‘de-Nazification’ program Novosti and Tass mentioned in their news. The paratrooper attempt to take an airfield near Kyiv was not supported as it should have been if resistance was expected.
I find it hard to see how the Russians have avoided ‘shock and awe’. I have seen footage on various tv channels Al Jazeera, France 24, BBC which shown their own and Novosti scenes on widespread devastation.
An extended war was not really anticipated by anyone, including western intelligence services.
The war is dragged out because the people of Ukraine don’t want to be Russian. You may be right that the war will end with Ukraine having to cede land. The old principle of Might is Right may well prevail.
Ian Stevenson
I do not really see the problem here and I am not particularly following Ritter to begin with but Scott Ritter, like majority of world population, dealt with the information at hand. Majority did not fathom that a war would break out, and that included Zelensky himself
“Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky mocks West’s war prediction at Munich Security Conference “
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3l1iBCS9TQ
” Ukraine’s President Zelensky urges world leaders to tone down rhetoric on threat of war with Russia”
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/28/europe/ukraine-russia-zelensky-biden-intl/index.html
Russia could of course end this war in a week if they want; they have not been using the shock-awe-brutality against Kiev like the west in Iraq (again, I do not understand why they have not). Ritter, Douglas etc. are also military people, they judge the situation theory-based: in theory Russia is the stronger party, they are simply not using their full arsenal, to their disadvantage in my view, even though I do not support the war itself.
You still do not understand this war. Russia is in many aspects in Ukraine just because Ukraine simply refuse to accept the Donbass/russians to be members ot the ukrainian statehood. 9 years of shelling of Donbas have proved this time and time again.
It is not about the “mighty” win, it is about regular people living in Donbas simply want their freedom from Ukraine. It’s no more controversial than the break up in Yugoslavia.
” Russia could of course end this war in a week ”
Well why don’t they? Don’t believe any of this carp about a ‘softly softly’ approach to limit civilian casualties, we’ve seen that’s rubbish. As well as being a drain on resources, failure to conclude a war against a nation a fraction its size, and which was the poorest in Europe, is a propaganda disaster. It’s turned the Russian army into a laughing stock.
Pears
I do not know why they are not doing that as I just stated.
Russia have missiles reaching the whole world so of course they could easily target Kiev with massive bombardment and the war will be over.
Russia is not only fighting Ukraine but the collective west in Ukraine and still being able to succeed better than Ukraine/west.
If you think that Russia will simply go home one day I have bridge to sell, and I am saying that as someone that does not support the war.
“The war is dragged out because the people of Ukraine don’t want to be Russian.”
Does that include the ones who were already Russian before 2014?
Pears… I think I safely assert that Scot Ritter has far more credibility than you..For a Start, he was very much involved in Nuclear weapons Treaties.
well anyway here is is a good article on the History of Arms control –
SCOTT RITTER: Arms Control or Ukraine?
February 22, 2023
” The fact is, however, Putin’s speech was something rarely heard in Western political circles —unvarnished statements of fact, set forth in a straightforward, surprisingly easy-to-understand manner.
In a world where Western politicians regularly dissemble to shape perception, even if the underlying “facts” are not true (one need only refer to President Joe Biden’s infamous phone call with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in July 2021, for an example), Putin’s speech was a breath of fresh air — no hidden agendas, no false pretense — no lies.
And on the issue of arms control, the truth hurts.
and at the bottom the piece –
” To save Ukraine, arms control must be destroyed.
To save arms control, Ukraine must be destroyed.
One sacrifices a nation, the other a planet.
This is the Hobson’s Choice U.S. policy makers have created, except it is not.
Save the planet. That is the only choice.
Full article is @ –
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/02/22/scott-ritter-arms-control-or-ukraine/
Why are people of whom you disapprove always in the pay of one of our designated enemies? Can’t they simply be wrong? I find most of your opinions and many of your “facts” to be of questionable veracity, but I wouldn’t say that that necessarily means that you are in the pay of one of those organisations that Craig mentions at the end of each post.
Funny enough I want to point out Scott Ritter every time Mr. Murray mentions his disregard for the russian army.
The daily clobber reports by the russian DoD seem to portray a point of view, that is sooner or later confirmed as reality in some form. My guess is, that these reports are meant for Russia’s partners in BRICS to confirm themselves as the counterweight to the empire of lies (wouldn’t it have been great if we had been able to simply dismiss that label as implausible?)
The brutal maths of war – Russia fires ten times as many artillery rounds, artillery is known as the greatest killer in war, russia claims about 9-10 Ukrainian soldiers dead for every killed russian soldier, that does add up. Even if the numbers (which at least in part must be guesses) are exaggerated, they are most likely not as far away from the truth as the ukrainian numbers. We have one year to look back for data analysis and the official data from russia gives a coherent image, the ukrainian/NATO does not.
It strikes me as odd, that these “leaks” come out in this way and at this time. While the images look convincing, the way they were introduced to the general public is extremely suspicious. At best this is an attempt to prepare the western audience for the inevitable fall of Ukraine.
Ritter or half a dozen others. The brutal maths of war explains it well.
It is curious how the “Russia lies lies lies” theme has survived so much clear evidence of UK lies, US lies, Nato Lies.
Half the West still believes in Russiagate.
The weird thing is that Russia media largely underestimate how well Russia is doing – proof pretty much that Russian propaganda is either very poor or just non-existent.
When people tell you “before I begin you must beware Russian Propaganda” you know exactly what they really want to achieve.
Michael Droy
Western people are incredibly gullable, internet have made the westerner not smarter but dumber/conformist, quite an absurd trajectory – you get access to MORE information (through internet) but you choose to go the opposite way!
Even though I do not support the war, it is obvious that Russia is not going to simply leave one day as majority of westerners seems to believe, westerners seems to believe that russian economy is crashing full stop, but it is actually doing atleast as good/bad as the western economies are doing now, sometimes better.
Another lie westerners believe in is that: if only Russia leave Ukraine, there will be peace! But as the leak claimed: Nope!
https://twitter.com/gahamalian/status/1646600208736989186
Economically, it is certainly doing better than the UK. Meanwhile, I have never understood why anyone would believe that peace would break out spontaneously if Russia withdrew. Why would there be peace then when there was no peace from 2014 to 2022? Do they think Donbass, or worse, Crimea, would simply welcome Ukraine and another round of ethnic cleansing? Russia is trying to deal with the causes of conflict, while Kiev is tinkering unsuccessfully with the effects.
Do a majority of Ukrainians in the occupied areas even want Russia to leave? That’s a vital question but it is never addressed in the western media. The media give the impression that Ukrainians are all behind Zelenskyy.
Tom74
Yeah western establishment believe everyone is supporting Zelensky in Ukraine, they have no idea how fragmented Ukraine is.
On top of that Zelensky can do whatever he feels like, like true western-backed dictator.
President Zelenskyy Bans 11 Opposition Parties in Ukraine
https://www.leftvoice.org/president-zelenskyy-bans-opposition-parties-in-ukraine/
Zelensky Accused of Censorship Over Ukraine Media Law
https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-accused-censorship-over-ukraine-media-law-1770958
In risky move, Ukraine’s president bans pro-Russian media
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/5/ukraines-president-bans-pro-russian-networks-risking-support
This article by Caitlin Johnstone also covers what you say about the media and it doing the bidding of a countries security services instead of doing honest journalism.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/04/14/us-needs-separation-of-state-and-media/
Bellingcat is packed full of ex-security personnel.
“Among [Bellingcat]’s current personnel we have a former British Army officer, a former employee of GCHQ, former members of the US Department of Defense, the US Secret Service, the US Army and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office”
Some of its funders include.
Porticus
Adessium
The Open Society Foundations
The National Endowment for Democracy
Pax for Peace
The Dutch Postcode Lottery
Adessium
The National Endowment for Democracy
The Dutch Postcode Lottery
Zandstorm CV
Sigrid Rausing Trust
Stichting Saxum Volutum
Stiftung Auxilium
Civitates
Swedish Postcode Foundation
EU
Stichting Democratie en Media
SIDN
I think MintPress was on this a lot earlier:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bellingcat-intelligence-agencies-launders-talking-points-media/276603/
Where did Caitlin Johnstone emerge from anyway…?
To add: the way Johnstone emerged from nowhere alongside her American husband has always made me suspicious. It’s like she’s the mirror image of Elliott Higgins… Wouldn’t surprise me if at some crucial moment she backs a war or starts distorting important information to undermine its credibility.
I’m currently going with the theory that Texeira is a ‘patsy’. It appears (?) that this information wasn’t actually released, as such, but was ‘discovered’ by the bellenders on a closed group that Texeira was involved with. Contrast this case with that of Joe Biden who was found with Secret documents in his garage.
In reality there is nothing really new or unknown in these leaks, but they are useful to guide the direction of thinking – and the timing of their release is politically useful. Also, provides more ammunition for clamping down on free speech and truthspeakers.
Good related article(s) here:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/04/-leaks-pinned-on-russia-and-other-issues-with-them.html#more
This writer actually watched Elliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcrap’s meteoric (not) rise.
First came across him when he was on some Guardian boards rooting for the anti-Gaddafi forces under moniker Brown Moses, during NATO’s air campaign in Libya.
He was no secret service back then, more like an unemployed git from Northern England on paternity duty, of all things, living off his Turkish born wife.
The “Arab Spring” took off, and dude got into all that death porn, obsessing over videos of fighting with casualties, executions that Islamist and Western backed terrorists circulated then freely on youtube under guise of looking for weapons and what not.
Stupid though he always was, he started to pick up some knowledge weaponry-wise and notice a few things here and there, as to supply of weaponry initially, where it came, who armed those insurgents.
He always was pro-Western narrative, though did pick on some stories early on that seemed to contradict official Western position.
But then the 2014 coup happened in Ukraine and he suddenly, is no longer Brown Moses, sets up Bellingcrap, gets funding, gets picked up by somebody and suddenly is doing lecture tours on osint and stuff etc.
It’s all right, meteors generally fall rather than rise.
You reminded me that Blaise Pascal once said about meteors “there are no rocks in the air, therefore none can fall to the ground”. Technically, a swarm of meteors like the Perseids or Bellingcats would be called a shower.
Can we now look forward to the annual Bellingcat shower? Presumably its apparent radiant would be near Vauxhall Bridge.
I think having a go at NYT etc misses the point – the Teixara angle is clearly a fake. There is no way he could have independently gathered a fraction of these documents (yes – impossible). This is a ridiculous story on the level of the Skripal poisoning (another bizarre coverup of something that went very wrong, but I guess we won’t ever find out). He was fed them or blamed for them.
Veracity – if we knew which were the first leaks, we could say they were true. But anything could have been added since, to throw everyone off the trail.
Casualties in Ukraine are pretty straightforward, though I accept it takes a lot of work to find out who the reliable sources are.
35–50k Russian dead, half Russian army, the rest mostly Wagner and LPR/DPR forces who have done much of the face to face clear out work. Fits with BBC / MI6 / Media Zone investigation identifying some 19k dead to date.
Ukraine 200k+ dead. Quite simply many more than that have disappeared from the ranks.
Wounded probably x3 for Russia and x2 for Ukraine whose troops have lower levels of training and whose officers just don’t give a damn, so fewer wounded survive.
It is odd.
As after the Snowden leaks, it was widely reported the NSA introduced an inconvenient dual authorisation requirement and other burdensome obligations on staff. Administrators could access networks containing top-secret classified information, but only after receiving secondary authorisation. And as for exfiltrating data, well that’s presumably been made near impossible? Precisely to stop a rogue network administrator (highest system privileges) simply using those privileges to scrape for classified documents with a web crawler script, as Snowden did.
He’s 21 years of age, you would’ve thought they’d have designated level access based on years of military service? With years granting access to an ascending order of sensitivity, or higher access control: STRAP 1, STRAP 2 and STRAP 3 would be granted in review stages. STRAP being the UK system. I guess they just want to throw talented IT people in at the deep end. The top brass probably know very little about information technology, if anything probably fearing it. The most amusing thing is how he reportedly stated he is god-loving and anti-war. How did he get through vetting?
Those are restrictions pertaining to systems administrators, not to analysts or consumers of intelligence. It’s no secret there are over half a million people with “top secret” clearances and it’s all but impossible to stop leaks in those circumstances, but audit logs of who accessed what information were in place before Snowden (he circumvented them by tricking staff who should know better into giving him their credentials). Thus the authorities probably knew Teixeira’s identity as soon as they searched the audit logs for who accessed the leaked docs. Why this rigmarole of needing “citizen journalists”?
Of course another possibility is that Teixeira was a useful idiot fed the intelligence, possibly tampered with, in the hope he would leak it.
Too cynical to offer much by way of comment here. Pure propaganda in motion. There is nothing that I have seen heard or read that suggests that these documents containing mostly false information were other than deliberately leaked with a script enacted to provide the narrative.
Meanwhile Seymour Hersch continues to pump out from his single source much more significant information without there being much media or official interest shown in either the content or indeed in finding the source, who is certainly not a 21-year-old sprog.
In the highly unlikely event of there even being a grain of truth in any of this, I would have thought that USA politicians should be asking questions about the most junior of their security service personnel having access to top classified information, as suggested by the article linked to the blog which reports:
“In a sworn statement, an FBI agent said that Teixeira had held a top secret security clearance since 2021, and that he also maintained sensitive compartmented access to other highly classified programs”.
That would make him 19–20 years old at the time of being granted such access.
Pretty much all the MSM has been deeply captured and it’s been this way for a long time now.
I’m surprised anyone’s surprised by this, tbh.
IMHO it’s entirely invented and Mr Teixeira is an actor, his arrest wholly faked. There are two apparently contradictory explanations possible:
1. In the leaked material there is some deeply buried piece of misdirection that will permit the USA to help Ukraine sucker-punch Russia when the much-vaunted and equally delayed counteroffensive finally takes place.
or
2. The fact of leak will form the basis for the excuse the USA has realised it needs to bail from the Ukraine-Russia conflict to start to seriously prepare for WW3 in the Pacific.
Of those, 2. would seem to me to be more likely, but what do I know ? Maybe the existence of 2. as a possible explanation is itself the sucker-punch in 1.? Anyone ?
I’ve been familiar with Bellingcat’s modus operandi since the notorious argument with Prof. Postol about Douma chemical weapons use. Postol was eventually proved entirely correct, of course.
I speculated on Twitter that Bellingcat’s role was to mitigate the importance of the original leak of about 50 documents including Noforn, which were likely authentic, by flooding the space with pro-West fakes and thrash which would damage the credibility of the entire collection. Within 24 hours I was permanently banned by Twitter. Since I’m more prone to gentle satire than swearing and posted nothing else of note in that period, it must have pissed someone off.
Interestingly, Glenn Greenwald just did a whole program about this incredible behaviour from these large media organisations and how they treat their sources. His point is exactly the same as this post from Craig Murray.
(For those who might not know, Glenn Greenwald was one of the founders of The Intercept and went to Hong Kong to be handed over all the leaked material by Edward Snowden).
I am grateful to the likes of MM Murray or Greenwald to help us keeping some form of clear-mindedness in this mess.
Russia is defending its Independence, while Ukraine is defending its colonisers , the descendants of Ukrainian Nazis who are in positions of colonial power in the US.
Russia’s defence of its independence has often been totally ruthless as in Grozny and as in Syria.
A ruthlessness which would have served Scotland in better stead than 300 years of Unionist gravy-training.
It must be a bitter pill that Russia’s alliance with the world’s largest economy has frustrated the Great Game, while Scotland remains stuck like a spider in the bath, hungry and likely to be drowned.
> Russia is defending its Independence
Ukraine is not a threat to Russia’s independence, unless you share Mr. Putin’s opinion that Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk (or even the whole of Ukraine) are really part of Russia.
> Russia’s defence of its independence has often been totally ruthless as in Grozny and as in Syria.
What nonsense. Grozny was no threat to Russian independence; Chechenya was an independent republic since the fall of the USSR, that had the misfortune to share a border with Russia. Syria has never been a threat to Russian independence. Russia’s attack on Syria was motivated by Russia’s desire to protect their ally (and neighbour), Assad, from a political challenge.
Countries sharing a border with Russia obviously face existential danger from Russia; it is Russian government policy that all such countries fall within Russia’s “sphere of influence”.
Any country in the world, anywhere, faces the threat of US action for non-compliance in regards America’s will; your argument is old and tired. If you wish to make pronouncements on the activities on nation states, a little honesty is the best way of persuading others that you are not shilling for one party or the other. Grow up and accept history,
We all know Power, from the personal to the supranational – we are not children to be feed false equivalencies.
Power IS. The rest is just stories, might be’s and aughts.
To give you the benefit of the doubt, i.e. your comment is well-meaning but errant; the game has been the balkanisation of Russiia for a hundred and fifty years or more. Try, in good faith, to deny this.
What do I care about US, Russia or even (to me) the real baddie, Britain. As a poverty-stricken wretch at the end of my life, I can honestly say I call it as I see it – I can be wrong, of course. Nothing can buy my opinion, I want nothing, therefore I want for nothing; my only desire is cessation, so unlike most others, I am sure to get exactly what I desire.
One of the underlying mysteries is why these co-opted media outlets still have any readers/viewers/listeners, especially when there are so many reputable journalists and analysts on various platforms. If I discovered that someone I knew had repeatedly and knowingly lied to me against my interests or well-being, I would have nothing more to do with them. Ditto Mockingbird ‘news’ outlets.
“One of the underlying mysteries is why these co-opted media outlets still have any readers/viewers/listeners,”
Well what reliable information do we have about how many readers/viewers/listeners there are? The papers are in every supermarket but you hardly ever see anyone buying them.
Of all comments on the validity of this very junior Air Force National Guard actions, it is the observation that the inclusion of CIA documents in the ‘trove’ casts doubt on the narrative so far.
Claims by ex CIA staffers in the blog world, that CIA documents would not be circulating in the centre this guy was working ring true. Apparently the CIA only allows access to its documents via its own systems, to its own people; they don’t share.
Another aspect of this incident that gives it a Skripal smell, is that all the documents known of are only about the conflict in Ukraine. A SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) is a military facility that deals with more than just Ukraine…. so why no documents covering events elsewhere…_
https://sonar21.com/the-21-year-old-leaker-something-is-not-right/
DiggerUK,
I am a bt itroubled about the CIA point, because it is basically not true, so I am not sure what Larry Johnson et al mean.
I saw literally thousands of CIA intelligence reports in my career, shared with MI6 who then distributed them as appropriate to vetted UK officials,
In Washington, the CIA distributes its reports to departments and agencies, each one of which has a receiving hub that then handles the distribution within its organisation to vetted staff via routeing indicators. It is not the case at all they are held within the CIA.
As for the selection, these documents have been printed, folded and by the look of the folding carried out in a pocket. I don’t find it at all strange that Texeira would concentrate on one subject.
Craig, Grateful for your response, Thankyou.
It has been many years since you served. The rules on dissemination of intelligence documents will have also changed. I’m hoping to shine a light on one corner of this skrippaly affair.
I don’t believe you were a civil servant post Manning and Snowden, access to sensitive information in the aftermath was overhauled.
I don’t believe Mr. Johnson ever claims CIA sourced information was never shared, just that it wasn’t shared as a matter of course or procedure. And not in such facilities as a military SCIF that our National Guardsman worked.
Anyway, right on cue comes this latest from Mr. Johnson…_
https://sonar21.com/more-unanswered-red-flags-regarding-jack-texeira/
The distribution system I describe has not changed, for sure.
The CIA works to a set of tasks determined by the departments it sends its intelligence to. It does not self-determine what it looks at and is in no sense a closed loop system. That is just fundamentally untrue.
If I may, I assert that the CIA does act at times directly in its own self interest perhaps without direct instruction from those who it reports to. I cite the drug running during the American War (as the Vietnamese correctly name it). Air America, Nugan-Hand bank etc.. Alfred McCoy is my reference on this. In this case it is likely that others, like senior military intelligence knew of it and deliberately ignored or clandestinely condoned it. I can’t imagine them instructing the drug running.
Similar elements emerge in parts of the “off the shelf exercise” in the drug and gun running during the 80s to support the Contras. The military was obviously far more involved in this with Ollie North representating a part of the military faction involved. I may be wrong here, and the whole damn thing, including drug running cocaine into sou’cal was approved by the highest levels of the executive. Gary Webb managed to shoot himself in the head, twice, for exposing this.
Once again, thank you Craig,
Rules are often ‘guidelines’ and are often ‘amended’ as you go along. Cockups are not unknown either.
Mr. Johnson is adamant that the CIA documents claimed to have been in our guard’s hands should have been inaccessible to him, neither should they have been in the SCIF. Let’s hope time will tell.
You are a known quantity with the Consortium News crew, and Mr. Johnson ends his piece “I remain skeptical of the narrative and hope by raising these questions that some genuine journalists will explore the oddities and try to get to the ground truth” ….I’m sure your enquiries will be answered. I’m banned…_
The trajectory of this war does remind me of Vietnam. Starting out with the assumption that the US/West with all its technology is bound to win. Ludicrous claims of thousands of enemy dead. Think of a number, then multiply it by ten. Nobody will question it. Then media coverage starting to go quiet as doubts set in. We don’t see much of Zelensky these days, do we? Two noticeable differences: no Western troops – body bags and PoWs are such a downer. And, since Western troops aren’t involved and there are no telegrams to be counted here, the media can simply not mention casualties on “our” side, hoping we’ll imagine there aren’t any. I wonder how many of the public notice. After Vietnam, the US stopped invading for something like ten years before trying baby steps in Grenada, then working their way up to new catastrophes like Iraq and Afghanistan. In what way will history repeat itself?
My view, too, on the Vietnam similarity. Sadly the neolibs carry the new banner of Wolfowitz Doctrine and there is no end to the aggression. Even as we speak, they’re at it again in Sudan.
You have to remember that it’s the Russians who are the foreign invaders here, but the obsession with body counts is similar. With nothing else to measure in terms of territory gained or lost the US Military used to issue regular body counts to try and convince a sceptical American public that as they were killing more Vietnamese than the Vietnamese were killing Americans they were wining. That might sound familiar. https://www.tiktok.com/@gaminiksg/video/7218788132752264449?lang=en
Out of interest the final butcher’s bill for Vietnam was 849,000 North Vietnamese Army and VC killed out of a population of 44 million (plus another one million or so civilian deaths); US military dead numbered 58,281 from a population of 305 million. Which is a good illustration of how misleading it can be to read too much into body counts.
“You have to remember that it’s the Russians who are the foreign invaders here,”
In both wars the US was/is “helping” the invaded side. The main difference is that the US has not (yet) sent troops to Ukraine.
The issue is how long each side can sustain the losses without running out of troops or their morale collapsing. In this, the Ukrainians are at a clear disadvantage if casualties are similar because their army is much smaller. The Russians, if their losses were problematic, always had the option of throwing in massive force for a killer blow. They haven’t done that. Maybe I’ll be quickly proved wrong but it looks to me that not much is happening at all now. The Russian “spring offensive” has taken place. They have firmed up control of the areas they always intended to take and are digging in. We’re halfway through spring and as yet no sign of the promised Ukrainian offensive that would cause their side heavy casualties as they go up against those defences. Those commenting that these “leaks” are to soften up public opinion for a settlement ceding that territory to Russia may well be right.
According to the leaks the ukrainian offensive is to start april 30/early may.
Pentagon leaks reveal date of Ukrainian counteroffensive – Newsweek
Kiev is reportedly expected to launch a push against Russian forces at the end of this month
https://swentr.site/russia/574886-ukraine-offensive-date-pentagon/
Why do not bellingcat help states like Russia or China finding russians/chinese that leak information about their respective governments? Rhetorical question of course…
bellingcat is such an apparent front for western intelligence services. Thus being able to control the narrative in the western media, but behind their activities you find the hand of CIA, Mi6, Mi5 and their collaborators.
Could you imagine the western response if there was a russian “bellingcat” that was funded by FSB, SVR?
You think the west would give such an organisation any credibility?
Western msm/politicians are so full of themselves these days.
Great article, Craig.
I’ve been following the story closely from largely neutral point of view. Article 1 is early details (20 references). Article 2 provides a unification of narratives which is a plausible conspiracy theory (17 references). Article 3 is an analysis of the affadavit which is the foundation for the Criminal Complaint against the accused, Teixeira (a verbatim copy of relevant part of the complaint, a link to it, and one other reference).
https://yesxorno.substack.com/p/us-intelligence-leaks
https://yesxorno.substack.com/p/us-intelligence-leaks-the-plot-thickens
https://yesxorno.substack.com/p/us-intelligence-leak-the-criminal (complaint)
Thank you for your work.
Now you’re being completely ridiculous.
There’s no suggestion Texeira was any kind of whistle-blower in the sense of revealing government criminality. If you think there’s a public interest defense to leaking secret documents simply because they show the government wasn’t telling the public the whole truth on national security issues, then you’re basically refuting the notion of government secrecy – a viewpoint that’s not entirely incoherent, but you might expect to fall foul of secrecy laws, which do uphold that notion. Not to mention the specific employment and security contracts signed by people, like Texeira, who are given clearance.
No, this guy is not a whistle-blower. He’s a very silly boy who’s going to spend an awful long time in prison.
What’s ridiculous is the ‘liberal’ media being so furious about government lies being exposed that they hunt down the culprit for the liars. In fact it is more frightening than ridiculous.
I thought “refuting the notion of government secrecy” is part of being a whistleblower.
As to the term “national security” – I don´t know whom Noam Chomsky was quoting, when he said, do governments speak of “national security” it most likely has nothing to do with the security of the nation, that is “its people”. Rather the opposite.
(Regardless of that; as an outsider I still wonder why Texeira would not prepare an escape. In my view that behaviour makes absolutely no sense. I therefore still doubt the entire story. Besides in the post-Snowdean era security should most likely be much tighter than it already was.)
Being a whistle-blower, in the public interest, is exposing government illegality – like the use of torture, extraordinary rendition, corruption. It doesn’t cover just any exposure of government secrets – like because you don’t agree with government policy, or to show off to your chat room buddies.
If war casualty numbers are a US government secret, they should just say so. Making up false ones is obviously an attempt to subvert democracy, so exposing the true figures, and the government lie, is in the public interest.
I am no lawyer. But the illegality of government secret is no prerequisite to justify whistleblowing.
(Why would whistleblowing need ANY justification?)
If we look at the US Supreme Court´s decision on the Pentagon Papers 1971 (NYT vs. USA)
The question of illegality was, I believe, not the subject.
Quoting content from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States
The Espionage Act served as justification for the indictment of the NYT pointing out that the information published:
“(…)could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation(…)”.
That pretty much would appear uncontestable in e.g. today´s public perception.
After all, since when would citizens want their beloved state to be”injured”?
However the majority decision1971 was pro NYT. Among others it contains following phrases:
“(…)The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security(…)”
– Judge Black –
“(…)Justices Potter Stewart and Byron R. White agreed that it is the responsibility of the Executive to ensure national security through the protection of its information. However, in areas of national defense and international affairs, the President possesses great constitutional independence that is virtually unchecked by the Legislative and Judicial branches. “In absence of governmental checks and balances”, wrote Justice Stewart, “the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in [these two areas] may lie in an enlightened citizenry – in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government”.(…)”.
I have the feeling at times that citizens often are not aware of their rights and how far reaching they mostly (still?) are. Not least since our intellectual “culture” teaches us to not think too much about this. (How many Americans would know?)
Another historic note: Had Klaus Fuchs leaked the info on nuclear physics to the world public, would he be considered a whistleblower today?
I believe the government shall have no secrets which it is keeping from its citizens.
” It doesn’t cover just any exposure of government secrets – like because you don’t agree with government policy, or to show off to your chat room buddies.”
Why are casualty figures of a war in which your country is not a participant, nor in a formal alliance with any of the participants, government secrets?
Of course, the casualty figures are not a US government secret. Go ahead and publish whatever figures you like, or want to make up. But those US government documents discussing the casualty figures certainly are classified, which is what Texeira published.
So unless you can show me a direct illegal action that the documents are exposing, I can’t call the guy a whistleblower or argue with his prosecution according to the law and his employment contract.
And no, hiding truths from the public and trying to manipulate the media narrative is not illegal. As Craig says, the idea that such figures from any side would be true is quite laughable.
I do agree it’s distressing that the media these days are not holding our governments accountable for their obvious untruths, or investigating at all critically those narratives put forward. The fact we get the same arguments, even often the exact same wording, parroted by every outlet, despite their superficial “differences” on the political spectrum, is outrageous. And reflected in the same depressing lack of choice that Craig highlights in our election voting options.
Whether this is a grand media / political conspiracy, I’m not sure. It might more just be a consequence of the new media dynamics in the digital age. People are not paying for enlightenment. They are provided with “content” that powers the clicks and data collection. It’s no part of the contract that the content should be truthful or beneficial. It’s only a small step to having all that media content just generated by Artificial Intelligence, crafted to exactly fulfil the needs of each consumer, as identified from their previous reading choices, culled and copied from available reports and reporting styles that were popular, producing exactly the required neuro dopamine hits. Love Island blends with the Ukraine War blends with Trump vs. Biden blends with World Cup Football, Formula 1, or UFC. We won’t even need events on the ground or human journalists to generate the media, and the question of whether anything is truthful will not be meaningful. We will be entertained.
This is not a conspiracy, it’s a natural evolution and consequence of people’s choices.
You criticise NYT, Washington Post, Guardian etc for publishing little of Texeira’s material but you still have not published a word of Stewart McDonald’s emails more than two months after declaring you have them. Now is the time to release all the dirt on SNP.
In Viktor Pelevin’s futuristic dystopian novel “Transhumanism, Inc.” CIA and CNN have merged into a single agency called CIN. If you’ve watched Anderson Cooper weeping crocodile tears for the children of Donbass, you may think Pelevin has got a point.
But, seriously, what worries me most is the degradation of Western journalism that you’ve described so well. I used to like movies like Under Fire (1983) and I imagined that journalism is/will be always like this, at least some of it. To be fair, some Under Fire spirit was still alive in the early 00s. For example, Dexter Filkins travelled to Iraq and later published a very revealing book, The Forever War (2008), based on his first-hand observations and interviews he took there. However, overall, neither American public nor American journalists had shown much interest in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was brilliantly captured in another movie, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), where a journalist, played by Tina Fey, has just adopted to her new life in Afghanistan only to be told by her boss that Afghanistan does not matter anymore. In real life, how many American journalists were killed in Afghanistan? Just one, David Gilkey. And how many American journalists were killed in Iraq? Just one, Steven Vincent. Compare this to Vietnam where 22 American journalists were killed or went missing. This makes sense. Why risk your life to bring people the news if people do not want the news?!
This brings me to the sad conclusion that the degradation of journalism goes hand in hand with degradation of the society. People do not want the truth, they want moral comfort. If they want drama, they watch Nancy Grace on CNN screaming for hours and hours about some idiot mother who killed her children. This makes this woman look bad but brings moral comfort to the audience. They are good people, they did not kill their children! And because people want moral comfort they do not like WikiLeaks and Assange. WikiLeaks revealed that Americans are savages, and nobody wants to be a savage, this causes moral discomfort. This was Assange’s real crime, not some he-gave-away-top-secret-put-our-boys-in-danger crap. I see very few protesters demanding Assange’s freedom, compared to, say, recent protests in Paris and Bordeaux. Take bread and circus away from people and they’ll burn down the whole London; take the truth away and they’ll only be happier. WikiLeaks is dying because nobody needs it.
So if the real news do not matter people go for prefabricated fake news. “Journalists” write about Donbass w/o ever going there. In fact, no Western journalist ever visited Donbass after 2014. They do not want to know. Take Yaroslav Trofimov, for example. Some years ago he travelled the world, interviewed many folks in Muslim countries and wrote a book about militant Islam, Faith At War. And what is he doing now? He writes about Donbass without visiting Donbass, generating the same prefabricated news as do CNN, Bellingcat and the rest of them. Supply and demand, Craig, demand and supply.
“People do not want the truth, they want moral comfort.”
They also want to be reassured that their opinions are the correct ones, without having to do any research or even much in the way of thinking. “Who in the media can we trust now?” seems to be a commonly asked question.
“the same prefabricated news… supply and demand… demand and supply”
Exactly right. And very soon it won’t even require humans to produce, let alone decent journalists. AI chat bots can put together the required stories, fed to people based on their previously revealed preferences, just the right notes, comfort, comforting outrage, truth or fiction, whatever keeps the clicks flowing. It’s not even a conspiracy, it’s just the way it works.
The Guardian has become a travesty. The only comments they seem to allow from readers these days are ones that agree with the newspaper’s viewpoint. Much else is deleted or, more often, never appears at all. (I know that from personal experience.) Foreign policy seemed to be completely off limits unless it matches UK policy. But even criticising Labour and Keir Starmer – basic political knockabout, nothing personal – seems to breach their ‘community standards’. I can remember, by contrast, the vitriol they permitted (encouraged?) towards Jeremy Corbyn in the run-up to the 2019 election, while their commentators ‘aimed off’ against Boris Johnson.
Ditto The Independent and Israel.
“nothing has been published that does not serve US propaganda narratives.”
Exactly so. What we have here with this whole episode is that famous dirty digger land originated diversionary tactic :
THROWING A DEAD CAT ON THE TABLE.
And I’m sorry to say that many who should know that for what it is have decided to shift their attention upon such stinking dead moggies being shovelled daily through the only media they are allowed to look at.
All owned by the very few. All powered by the propaganda multipliers of Reuters and AP. All regurgitated by the Ken and Barbie CIA trained mockingbirds planted in the Collective Wastes Media for decades.
And what exactly is our attention being diverted from?
Well if you don’t know of the epochal, monumental ch..ch..CHANGES taking place amongst the 85% of the world’s population’s, the ex-colonial and more escaping colonies daily as they see that they will not be left to stand alone and be murdered like, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya … any number of African countries that Obama himself terrorised… the Blair/Clinton Atlantic Supremacists – if you have no idea that IS the main NEWS on the planet in the last few weeks, well that is very sad.
The deaf, dumb and blind have more nous.
See those Saudis and Iranians, Syrians and Iraqis all talking to each other with the highest level of diplomatic contacts established? Call it Solamani’s revenge.
Do you see Brazilian Lula and Xi meeting and talking to the UAE?
What about Africans booting colonial French out finally?
South East Asia beginning to gallop from a century of US invasion?
De-dollarisation gathering pace and ahead of schedule?
Our self-abuse by cutting of cheap clean gas, and nuclear power for some deadly dangerous expensive LNG and Dirty Coal pushed by the ‘Greens’, warmongering nato-loving, Greens!!
Even the deadly circus that is chewing up the unchristian, bigoted, actual Nazis and their unwilling pressganged daily in the great show is failing to keep our attention.
So we have China Bad, Russia Bad. Arabs Bad, Mexicans Bad, Africans bad … dog whistle racism, fascism as the last desperate attempt of this decrepit old Imperium.
Countless new coups as the Color Coups no longer work.
That my dear friends is what I perceive – by having eschewed mainstream news media and got rid of my teevee half a dozen years ago, I suppose seeing a mass propaganda campaign has become easier for me to see, as some tsunami on the horizon…
To finish on the comparison of the late stage Roman Empire, that some bloggers are beginning to notice, the modern praetorians are out of control; they are packs of rabid foaming at the mouth mongrels barking at the Caravan moving on. (NAFO’s didn’t realise they were picking such an apt avatar ?)
We are led into the fascist wonderland planned by the ‘DOMINATE’* as their last gasp cornered rat scream into oblivion.
———————————-
Despair not friends, look up at the Caravan coming over the horizon!
Ignore our slave masters and laugh at their attempts at keeping our attention upon the dead cats they throw at us. We are blessed indeed to be living through the Interesting Times of final emancipation of Humanity, end of poverty and Civilisational Progress resumed after a millennia of stagnating supremacy of the old, old praetorians spawn.
* The “Dominate” is the name sometimes given to the “despotic” later phase of imperial government, following the earlier period known as the “Principate”,
A little wiki to help understand that exactly:
‘ the Dominate is considered to have been more authoritarian, less collegial and more bureaucratic than the Principate from which it emerged.’
“Despair not friends, look up at the Caravan coming over the horizon!”
While the dogs bark furiously – almost desperately.
Craig, I agree with your points about Bellingcat, etc. But comparing Texeira to Snowden is ill-advised and plays into the hands of the US security establishment. As others have pointed out, there is something fishy about these leaks. It looks like ‘modified’ classified information was directed towards someone who normally would not have clearance, and who appears to be a bigot, to serve two purposes:
1. Produce misinformation (from the US agencies) that seems credible
2. Discredit the kinds of people who leak information by doing it through someone who appears to be anti-Semitic and racist.
By placing Texeira in the same category as Snowden and Ellsberg you are helping to advance the second objective. Please try to write more carefully about this.
The so called “Nafo”, a pro-nato influence campaign started by a polish nazi, worked with WSJ to unmask a popular pro-russian blogger that spread the leak:
Ex-US Navy technician behind pro-Russian Twitter collective – WSJ
The “Donbass Devushka” collective was an early sharer of the Pentagon leaks documents
https://swentr.site/news/574853-donbass-devushka-us-navy/
All meant to silence her of course.