The Politicization of Intelligence in Ukraine

Politicized intelligence is not a new phenomena. It happened during the War in Vietnam as President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara pressured CIA analysts, George Allen and Sam Adams (those are real names) to change their conclusion that the Viet Cong had not been decimated by U.S. and South Vietnamese military operations. George, who trained me as a new analyst, wrote an amazing but largely unknown book, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam Hardcover – August 28, 2001. Allen tells you in detail how politics played a major role in that intelligence failure. Well worth your time.

I saw politicization as an analyst responsible for Honduras during the U.S. backed Contra war against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. I recall one occasion where I puzzled over a CIA field report about a Contra attack on a Sandinista target but there was no corroborating intelligence. Because I had friends on the operations side of the house working on the Central American Task Force, I was able to make some quiet inquiries. I was stunned to learn that the guy in charge of the military ops in that task force–a guy who graduated from West Point in 68 but missed the war in Vietnam–was drafting the operations orders for missions he wanted the Contras to carry out and then published those orders as intel about the success of those operations. Only one little problem–the operations never took place.

I suppose you would be shocked to learn that the same sort of shenanigans is going on in Ukraine. Well, it is true. I have learned that the U.S. intelligence community is publishing “facts” about what is happening on the ground in Ukraine based solely on information passed to us by Ukraine. The intelligence provided to U.S. leaders is politically slanted and is not being checked against other sources, such as signal intercepts and photography, to ensure the information is accurate.

Consider this video, taken by a Russian drone, of Ukrainians in the field. If you look carefully you will see the horrific image of a Ukrainian soldier being run over, after falling off of the troop carrier, by one of his own guys. The images in this video raise some real questions about the competence of the men driving these vehicles. By itself, this video is not definitive proof of Ukrainian incompetence. But it bolsters the Washington Post report earlier this week. Ukrainian soldiers told the WashPo reporter that they were being pushed to the frontline without adequate training. Do you think that is an important intelligence indicator that the west ought to consider as it continues to send equipment to Ukraine?

The Ukrainians also dusted off the Bucha playbook, i.e., accuse Russia of atrocities, and are pushing the story that they discovered “mass” graves in Izyum of corpses allegedly executed by Russia. The western media is insisting that is the only possible conclusion. But they ignore the fact that there were a lot of Ukrainian KIA during Russia’s capture of Izyum in March. Russia did not leave the bodies to rot in the sun. They buried them in mass graves. U.S. intelligence has the technical resources to monitor what Russia was doing in Izyum at the time. If Russia was executing Ukrainian soldiers, western intelligence would have the proof. Hell, even back in World War II with ancient technology, the United States and the UK learned about the Soviet massacre of Polish officers and literati in the Katyn forest and covered that up in order to protect Stalin. Do you really believe that western intelligence covered up Russian atrocities for five plus months in order to put out the horrible news now?

Unfortunately, the U.S. intelligence community is lethally infected with wokeness and political pandering. Analysts who paint a rosy picture of Ukrainian success are rewarded while those who dare to suggest there are problems are shut out or shunted aside. The Biden administration is all in for Ukraine and will not entertain any alternative view.

The following video is quite graphic (viewer warning), but it shows what happened to a Ukrainian unit that tried to take fortifications held by the 4th brigade of the LPR. It did not end well for the Ukrainian company:

One lesson illustrated in this horrific video–an outnumbered group of Luhansk soldiers held off and defeated a larger Ukrainian force with the assist of artillery, mortars and air strikes. You will notice the Ukrainians had no air support and no artillery support. At least this unit showed no ability to attack in operational depth. They were on their own.

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