“Well, we arrived at the site, it was the southern site, you know, the first bomb that exploded at 2:03 in the morning local time 26th of September, and we started by making sonar scans with the sonar sensors that are attached to the boat,” he says to the camera held by his daughter Agnes, who has joined him on the expedition to document his journey. “We’re scanning back and forth over the explosion site and by doing that, we got a three-dimensional depth profile. And we could map out, we could see immediately that that was the trench, 100 by 60 meters and 10-meter-deep trench, which was quite an interesting discovery. That’s what we were looking for. It’s almost like a photo of the crime scene. I think it’s the first time we have an accurate three-dimensional model of the crime scene.”

That evening, just after 5 p.m., Andersson stands inside the cabin of the Baltic Explorer behind the captain, watching a video monitor as the ship slowly maneuvers back and forth over a section of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off Sweden’s coast. On the screen, sonar imaging comes into focus and reveals a hole in a pipeline on the seabed. Andersson jokingly calls this section of the pipeline the “holy grail” of his investigation because it is the only section of the three strands of the Nord Stream pipeline that was bombed but did not cause a massive gas rupture. That’s because it was no longer pressurized when the explosives detonated. This is significant, Andersson says, because on the other two bombed lines, the explosion caused the pipeline to break apart, making it impossible to see what the initial puncture wound from the bombs looked like.

Before the expedition, Andersson believed that if he could find the hole, then it would be the first time anyone outside of a government authority or the Nord Stream company had examined a bomb puncture in the pipeline from the sabotage. “What we want to see is really the primary impact of the explosives. And this site is the only site I think now where we have any hope to see that because all the other sites, there had been this enormous outflow of gas: natural gas that’s just blown away all the mud and all the traces that were of the original explosion,” Andersson explained. “It’s not so easy to find. We didn’t see it on the boat-mounted sonar, so we have to send down the fish,” the nickname given by the captain to the submersible sonar device. Eventually, using the “fish,” they managed to find their target.

“It’s on the seam,” says the captain in a matter-of-fact tone as Andersson stares at the sonar monitor.

“It’s right on the seam?” Andersson asks.

“Yeah,” the captain responds.

“Whoa,” exclaims Andersson. “It’s on the seam! It’s right on the seam! Yeah. So, this is the first evidence that they actually put the explosives on the seam. They knew about the seam. That must be the weak point.”

Andersson is not a professional investigator or a journalist, and his voyage was not sponsored by a government. By training, he is an engineer with a master’s degree in engineering physics. He had a successful career at Volvo and Boeing and worked on advanced programs used by commercial and military aircraft, including U.S. military aircraft. He had followed the developments of the Nord Stream bombing carefully, but it was not until journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell story alleging that President Joe Biden had personally ordered the destruction of the pipelines that he became obsessed with the mystery. The expedition to the bombing site grew out of that passion. Andersson freely admits that he was motivated by a desire to prove that Hersh’s narrative was correct. What he found was quite different.

A handout photo provided by the Swedish Coast Guard shows the release of gas emanating from a leak on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea on Sept. 27, 2022.

Photo: Swedish Coast Guard via Getty Images

A Forensic Investigation

On September 26, 2022, when a series of explosions rocked the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea waters off the coasts of Sweden and Denmark, Andersson followed the news like everyone else. He says he didn’t see it as a massive geopolitical mystery or an event of much consequence beyond the potential environmental impact in the water. “It wasn’t like a big thing when it happened,” he recalls. “I found the media coverage fishy,” he said. “It was like they were downplaying it.” Initial news reports showed a pool of bubbling water caused by the discharge of gas in the sea. The possibility that the gas release was the result of a leak or other accident was quickly ruled out once the Danish and Swedish authorities did an initial survey of the site. And once the other bombs went off 17 hours later in multiple sites, there was no doubt. Government authorities swiftly concluded that an intentional act of sabotage had been carried out against a high-profile, profitable, and controversial international project controlled by Russia.

Andersson saw video clips circulating on Twitter that showed Biden and other U.S. officials appearing to threaten to take out the pipeline in the months before the attacks. “With all the history of the Nord Stream 2 and the motivation, I suspected that this was somehow a U.S.-sponsored action, I guess, but I wasn’t thinking much about that,” he said. Andersson had spent years working on jet fuel calculations for major airline corporations, and he was curious, on a scientific level, to hear details of how the pipelines exploded.

He was frustrated that very few technical details had filtered into the media. There were aerial images of the bubbling pools, but nothing showing the aftermath of the immediate impact. The first explosion had happened on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm at 2:03 a.m., so it is not surprising there was no active surveillance of the event itself.

“It was annoying me tremendously that the first footage was like 12 hours after. While in the immediate event, the gas plume must have been enormous and just the thought of what could have happened,” said Andersson.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines each had two lines that stretched from northwestern Russia and under the Baltic Sea to northern Germany. On Sept. 26, 2022, three of the four lines were severely damaged in an act of sabotage. The first explosion occurred on Line A of Nord Stream 2 at 2:03 a.m. off the coast of the Danish island Bornholm. Seventeen hours later, off the coast of Sweden, three more explosions occurred, damaging both of the Nord Stream 1 Lines and a second section of Nord Stream 2 Line A. Line B of Nord Stream 2, the one closest to Russian territory, was the only line left undamaged.

Map: The Intercept

Sweden, Denmark, and Germany all launched investigations with the support of the United States. Divers filled shipping containers with underwater evidence and conducted marine video surveys and forensic analysis. Publicly, insinuations and accusations proliferated. The U.S. all but accused Russia of blowing up its own pipeline. Ukraine directly accused Vladimir Putin of responsibility. Open-source analysts began monitoring ship movement data and speculating about how Moscow might have done it. Putin charged that “Anglo-Saxon powers” were behind the attack. Some analysts speculated that Poland, the most aggressive supporter of Ukraine’s fight against Russia, may be the culprit. Given the larger context of the Russian invasion, Ukraine clearly had the strongest motive, but Kyiv steadfastly denied it had anything to do with the bombing.

Andersson tweeted some criticism of the government investigations of the incident, mostly focused on the lack of transparency. He also criticized media outlets for not uncovering more forensic evidence, despite the official pronouncements that the explosions were a deliberate act of terrorism and the possibility the sabotage was conducted or sponsored by a major world power. He found the secrecy disturbing. “There was no real information being shared with the public about the evidence that had been gathered or just sort of what exactly happened down there on a scientific or forensic level,” he said. “I think that when the government is so secretive, they’re feeding speculation and conspiracy theories.”

On February 8, Hersh published his story on Substack, charging that Biden had personally authorized the bombing of the pipelines and that U.S. navy divers had planted the bombs on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines during NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercises in the Baltic Sea three months before they detonated. Russia publicly embraced Hersh’s story and introduced it as evidence of the need for an independent United Nations investigation into the attacks. The White House called Hersh’s report “utterly false and complete fiction.”

“When the government is so secretive, they’re feeding speculation and conspiracy theories.”

Andersson had never heard of Hersh, but when he saw journalists and commentators he admired on Twitter defending the 85-year-old reporter from the almost immediate deluge of attacks on his credibility by prominent media and political figures, as well as the denials from the White House, his gut instinct was that the right people were attacking Hersh. “I saw he had a lot of respect. I mean, this is a very experienced journalist, and he knows how to deal with sources, to evaluate his sources.” Andersson’s sense was that Hersh’s story was “probably true,” but he was mostly interested in the voluminous details contained in his report.

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Soon, Andersson was spending his days and nights poring over every news story on the bombing that he could find, watching hours of news footage, and exchanging analyses with a wide cross section of people on Twitter, mainly accounts scouring the internet for open-source data that might shed light on who perpetrated the attacks and how. Andersson would engage both critics and supporters of Hersh and argue his case, ask questions, or share information. He eventually helped assemble an informal online war room with a handful of other amateur sleuths, and they publicly and privately compared notes and built on one another’s research. He also watched countless interviews Hersh did about his story, hanging on to every new detail that had not been in his original article, including an assertion that some of the bombs planted by the saboteurs did not detonate, leading to a scramble by the U.S. to remove the evidence.

At the beginning of his full-time obsession with the Nord Stream attacks, Andersson worked exclusively online. He began tinkering around with MarineTraffic, a service for monitoring the movement of ships and vessels and began reviewing all the data from the Baltic Sea to search for corroboration of various aspects of Hersh’s report. He also argued with open-source analysts aligned with the research group Bellingcat, whose network emerged as a leading force in trying to debunk (and mock) virtually every detail of Hersh’s story. Andersson often appeared in the Twitter feed of Oliver Alexander, a Danish researcher who has been particularly vicious in his denunciations of Hersh (he refers to him as “Senile Hersh”) to argue with him about his conclusions. He also discreetly joined Bellingcat’s Discord forum on the Nord Stream bombing and said it appeared to him to largely be a groupthink operation aimed at proving that Russia was behind the attack.

Andersson also began corresponding with some prominent scientists and researchers in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, sharing his theories and analysis. Several leading researchers working to document the seismic activity caused by the Nord Stream blasts engaged in extended email exchanges with him, and some thanked Andersson for his insights and for pointing out discrepancies or errors in their data presentations.

On March 7, the New York Times and a consortium of German media outlets led by Die Zeit and ARD reported that U.S. intelligence and German law enforcement sources were investigating what they characterized as a “pro-Ukrainian” group suspected of being involved in the attacks. Neither story directly accused the Ukrainian government of involvement. The German reports identified a 50-foot sailboat, the Andromeda, rented in the Baltic Sea port town of Warnemünde by a company registered in Poland and owned by two Ukrainians. According to the reports, a team of six people, at least some of whom allegedly used fake passports, left a slew of evidence onboard, including explosive residue. Ukraine vehemently denied it had any involvement in the attacks. For his part, Hersh suggested that the Andromeda evidence had been concocted as part of a cover story to counter his exposé and draw attention away from the actual perpetrator, the U.S. government.

In this aerial view, the Andromeda, a 50-foot Bavaria 50 Cruiser recreational sailing yacht, stands in a dry dock on the headland of Bug on Rügen island on March 17, 2023, near Dranske, Germany.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Andersson grew tired of the online information wars and speculation based on publicly available data that he believed was subject to manipulation or biased interpretations. He had watched scores of documentaries and news reports about the Nord Stream attacks, including the handful of films featuring underwater footage of the damaged pipelines. He says he got the sense the journalists filming under the waters of the Baltic “were not guided by some forensic interest to figure out what was going on” and only filmed superficial footage of the crime scene. “There was no primary damage from the explosion anywhere, so there was nothing that could narrow down the number of possible narratives.”

In March, Andersson began looking for a captain with a ship willing to take him on his own expedition. Within days, he had contracted a vessel with Patrik Juhlin, a captain Andersson jovially described as a “cowboy.” Juhlin was an experienced and knowledgeable Baltic skipper willing to push the bounds of rules and regulations and cruise around in the international waters where multiple bombs had exploded. Andersson’s mission, he said, centered around “very simple objectives: the type, size, and placement of the bombs.”

Andersson spent $10,000 on the boat charter and another $10,000 on an underwater drone with a high-resolution camera and other equipment. He taught himself how to use the remotely piloted marine surveillance vessel, beginning in his backyard swimming pool and then eventually conducting tests off the coast of Gothenburg. He also wanted the ability to take sediment samples from the seabed, so he improvised a valve that looked like a high school science project. He used plastic cylinders and bicycle inner tubes to collect samples that might contain traces of explosives.

Andersson applied for permission from the Swedish and Danish authorities and was pleasantly surprised when they approved his request to conduct a survey. “It was perfectly legal and allowed to go there, but it was still prohibited by some sort of insinuation that we’re not supposed to do it,” he said.

Although Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the U.S., and Russia are all currently investigating the sabotage of the pipelines and are doing so with vastly superior equipment, resources, and access, Andersson was skeptical there would be any meaningful transparency from the national investigations — certainly not anytime soon. He had no hope that new organizations would do serious forensic investigations of the blast sites. “I think that there must be some competition if they are just sweeping the things under the carpet.”

Aboard the Baltic Explorer, Erik Andersson and his daughter Agnes monitor the video feed from an underwater drone over Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on May 24, 2023.

Screenshot: The Intercept, Video: Agnes Andersson

The Engineer

If you look at Erik Andersson’s CV, it paints an impressive picture of a successful entrepreneur and inventor. Early in his career he worked for Volvo, before his work caught the eye of major airline corporations and he negotiated the buyout of a program he had developed. He helped start a new company where, as chief technology officer, he oversaw the development of software for major airlines. Eventually, the firm was acquired by Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen in 2006 for $100 million. Andersson wanted to continue working for Boeing, so he stayed on as an engineer. “I worked on trajectory optimization and aircraft performance modeling. I learned a lot about flight physics and forces generated by accelerating gas masses,” he said. “Some of this general knowledge has been useful to me in the Nord Stream investigation.”

In 2016, he left Boeing and retired, though he continues to work on a variety of projects, including a teak wood harvesting plantation on a rainforest he manages in Brazil. How he came to own a majority share of that business is a story unto itself, but it centers around Andersson allegedly getting swindled out of $1 million by a Swedish politician and businessman. He aggressively fought back against the fraud, a battle that was covered by Swedish media. The politician denied any wrongdoing, but Andersson emerged from the battle with a majority stake in the business.

When you talk to Andersson or look at his social media feeds, you quickly encounter two major strands of his personality. Clearly, he has a sharp scientific and analytical mind. He researches his hypotheses extensively and tries to use solid scientific and mathematical approaches to proving or disproving them. He readily admits when he is wrong, though he first stubbornly exhausts all possibilities that he might be right. He engages in lengthy and detailed email exchanges and conversations with scientists and government officials in Sweden and elsewhere.

“I think it’s a healthy thinking process to create narratives and then look for confirmation as long as you are aware that’s what you are doing, and you’re ready to say you were wrong if the evidence says so,” he argues. “If you pretend to be ‘objective,’ you are much more likely to be fooled by your biases, I think. It’s also much easier to change your mind if you go all in for some narrative until you are exhausted and done with it.”

But there is another aspect to Andersson that would seem to contradict his scientific disposition, and that is his enthusiasm for a mishmash of fringe theories about Covid-19, the 2020 presidential election in the U.S., and other dubious narratives popular in MAGA world. He admires Donald Trump; disparages climate crisis activists; and retweets dubious theories about Anthony Fauci, Covid, and China. Andersson said he liked many of Trump’s campaign pledges, including on immigration, deregulation, and pulling back from foreign wars. He also supported Trump’s posture toward Putin and Russia.

Andersson didn’t just watch the Trump campaign. He logged onto a betting marketplace in October 2015 and saw that oddsmakers were offering 18 to 1 odds, so he placed an initial bet of 100,000 Swedish krona, a bit more than $12,000 at the time, that Trump would win in 2016. When he woke up the morning after the election, he was 2.5 million Swedish krona — or $300,000 — richer. “I should have put up a third of my fortune, the optimal bet, which should have been bigger. So, it was a small bet. I was very conservative.”

Andersson was elated when Trump won and said he wished Sweden could have a leader like Trump. Mostly, though, he was excited that a bombastic outsider might shake up the system in the world’s most powerful nation. “I was interested to see what would happen. You know, it’s like a big sledgehammer coming in.”

Perhaps it was his fascination with such counter-narratives that led him to believe so fervently in Hersh’s account of the Nord Stream bombing. But unlike many social media warriors, when confronted with empirical evidence that refuted his hypothesis, he changed his position.

Andersson retrieves soil samples taken near Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to test for explosive residue on May 24, 2023.

Screenshot: The Intercept, Video: Agnes Andersson

Popular Oversight

Andersson began his investigation onboard the Baltic Explorer on May 22 and declared his mission an act of “popular oversight.” If governments, especially those whose allies may be responsible for the attacks, “can control all the evidence and then tell a story and expect us to take it at face value, that’s not how the system should work.” He said he wanted to prove that private investigations of major world incidents could serve as a guardrail against media outlets spinning false narratives or governments covering up crimes. “This is no criticism of [lead prosecutor] Mats Ljungqvist and the Swedish investigation. I see signs that they might actually do a good job,” he said. “It’s more a general observation from similar cases that a certain amount of citizen oversight is good to help authorities to not abuse their control of information.”

For three days, Andersson’s vessel traversed the crime scene in the Baltic Sea, and he created extensive sonar maps of each of the blast sites. He filmed the damage from the explosions and the sites where sections of pipelines ruptured. In the case of one section of Nord Stream 2, which was punctured by a blast but did not explode because it had been depressurized, he captured what appears to be the only private footage of primary damage from an explosive device used in the bombing. He discovered craters from gas explosions and found evidence suggesting that the bombs had been dug into the mud, indicating that divers, not drones, likely placed explosives under or along the lines. “I felt that the Swedish investigator sounded very credible when he said that this could only be done by big state actor. And I don’t really see that now,” Andersson said. He also believes his research shows that it is unlikely a marine drone or other underwater vessel was used to plant the bombs, as has been suggested by analysts who believe Russia carried out the attack. “I think it would be very difficult to place the bomb under the seams with a remote-operated vehicle and do the variety of tasks of digging a hole and putting it in in there. It was a slab that you dig down next to the pipeline. I think a diver could have done it in a very short period of time.”

Hersh has been adamant that the bombs were placed by American divers and that it was a highly complex task necessitating not only U.S. Navy specialists, but also the support of Norwegian maritime forces. Some analysts, including Hersh, have also suggested that the 80-meter dive could not have been accomplished from a sailboat, such as the Andromeda, which has been connected by German law enforcement to the operation.

“Totally false,” says Peter Andersson, an executive at Poseidon Diving Systems, a Swedish company that provides advanced diving equipment to militaries around the globe, including the U.S., Germany, and Sweden. A world-class diver who travels the globe teaching military and civilian diving instructors to use Poseidon’s equipment, Peter (no relation to Erik) says he personally knows at least 30 divers in Sweden alone who are capable of such a dive. “It’s very common in Germany, very common in the U.S. and so on around the world doing these kinds of dives. I could easily do this, no problem,” he said. “You don’t need to be super experienced, but for a military diver or a paramilitary diver, it is no problem at all.”

Peter Andersson, who estimates that he has personally done several hundred dives in the Baltic Sea, said that if the divers dispensed with traditional safety precautions and backup equipment and used underwater propulsion devices to descend to the pipelines, the entire sabotage mission would be achievable in a matter of hours with two divers and a support crew. “In the case of doing this, bending all the rules, don’t care about security, don’t care about having bailout tanks that we normally have, if you’re in a war mode, you can easily go down with the machine,” he said. “Of course, if something happens, they will never find you. But I think that in this case, putting some explosives there has nothing to do with the rules and regulations and backup plans.”

While a sailboat would not typically be a sound choice for most deep-sea diving operations, in the case of a clandestine military or paramilitary operation, Peter Andersson says it would be a brilliant cover. “When you see a sailboat, the last thing you think of is diving,” he said. “That is a perfect disguise. If you take all the ships and the vessels that you can figure out to take — like a freight boat, canal boat, or whatever — the sailboat is the best way to disguise the diving operation because nobody would think that’s what you’re doing.” He said that if you had three or four strong individuals onboard, they could use ropes and other tools to retrieve the divers and equipment.

The divers, he said, would not have to be tethered to the boat. They could be dropped in the water and later use a marker buoy to identify themselves once they ascend. The boat could then cruise around in wait for the mission to be accomplished. Transporting the explosives to the bottom of the sea, even if they weighed hundreds of kilograms, he added, would be possible if the saboteurs used buoyancy bags. “And then you can work down there and even if you want to stay down there for one hour, it will only take like 3 hours to get to the surface in total,” he said.

Just because it would be possible to conduct such a dive operation from a sailboat does not mean that is what happened. Jens Greinert, a marine geologist who chairs the Deep Sea Monitoring Group at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, said he believes it would have been easier for the saboteurs to use remotely piloted devices rather than human divers to plant the explosives. “Personally I think it was either a small submersible, which doesn’t have to be big, or it was something along the lines of a robot,” he said in an interview with our reporting partner ARD. “You don’t need a diver to put anything in the sediment. I would even say machines can do it better.”

A former German military diver, however, was skeptical a submersible or robotic device was used to plant the explosives. Noting that the Baltic Sea is heavily surveilled, he said that using such equipment capable of planting bombs would have drawn far more attention and potentially necessitated a much larger vessel than a sailboat. “Both are possible, but it would have been a very sophisticated and very expensive robotic,” he told our reporting parter Die Zeit. “If it was a sailing yacht, it would have been complicated to deploy a robotic, because of the weight but also for the steering mechanism. You would need a calm sea and no wind.” He estimated that if humans planted the bombs, each dive would take between 30 minutes to two and a half hours depending on the equipment used and how much time was spent on the sea floor identifying the lines and planting the explosives.

When the Andromeda story first emerged in March, German officials cautioned that the ship could be a “false flag” to conceal the true identity of the saboteurs or that other ships may have been involved. The amount of evidence left on the boat and the trail of digital clues leading to Ukrainian individuals appeared to be either deliberate or the work of sloppy amateurs.

The kitchen area and table stand inside the Andromeda on March 17, 2023.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

German investigators appear to be intensifying their probe of possible Polish connections to the attacks, something Warsaw has consistently denied. The Andromeda is known to have made at least one 12-hour stop at a port in Poland during its voyage in the Baltic, and the Wall Street Journal reported that the Andromeda suspects “used Poland as a logistical and financial hub.” The Polish government said that allegation was “completely false and is not supported by the evidence of the investigation.”

Along with Ukraine, the Polish government was the most vehement opponent of the Nord Stream pipeline. Poland has direct access to the sea and held its own exercises, code-named REKIN-22, in the Baltic in late September, just days before the pipelines were sabotaged. The day after the blasts, Poland cut the ribbon on a new pipeline that was established as a direct competitor to the Moscow-led initiative. The Wall Street Journal revealed that the Ukrainians who rented the Andromeda were Polish residents and used local bank accounts and paralegals for their business. “There is no evidence whatsoever that would indicate the involvement of Polish citizens in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline,” Polish investigators said in a carefully worded statement June 21.

“Russia, the United States, and any number of other state or independent actors have the infrastructure and ability to have carried this off at a reasonable cost,” said a former U.S. Navy underwater demolition specialist who reviewed Erik Andersson’s footage and other images. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he now works in the private sector and is not authorized to speak to the media. “It doesn’t have to necessarily be a James Bond-esque operation.”

Seismic Readings

Andersson’s data suggests that the seismic readings registered after the explosions were not caused exclusively from the detonation of the bombs, but were also the result of the sudden and immensely powerful release of the pressurized gas from inside the pipelines. Andersson reached that conclusion after he and his son, a computational engineer who works on seismic surveys in the oil industry, ran a series of advanced mathematical equations. First, they solved Euler’s equations in the geometry of the pipelines, which created a basis for them to make calculations about what happened inside the lines after they were punctured by bombs. This data allowed them to utilize seismic air gun simulation software developed at Stanford University to understand the dynamics of the massive gas bubbles caused by the puncturing of the lines. They also ran the rocket equation to calculate the propulsive force of the gas. “The signature of the gas explosion is much bigger than the signature from the bombs,” Andersson said.

If their calculations are correct, various speculations that the explosions would have required 500-900 kilograms of explosives may be erroneous. The New York Times cited a European lawmaker briefed by his country’s foreign intelligence service late last year as saying more than 1,000 pounds, or 453 kg, of “military grade” explosives were used in the operation. “I am saying with high confidence that I don’t think the bombs were that big,” Andersson said. “The size of the bomb cannot be determined by the seismic data currently available.”

Andersson used side scan sonar imaging to create underwater maps depicting the condition of all four Nord Stream pipeline strands in May 2023. The images were captured by Captain Patrik Juhlin of the Baltic Explorer. The first explosion of the Nord Stream sabotage occurred on a section of Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm at 2:03 am on September 26, 2022. The puncturing of the pipeline caused a massive release of gas, resulting in high thrusts that severed sections of the pipeline and left large craters on the seabed.

Graphic: The Intercept / Sonar images by Patrik Juhlin of the Baltic Explorer and Erik Andersson

But Andersson is not just relying on calculating seismic and hydroacoustic levels to determine the size or placement of the bombs. His footage of a blast hole and other detonation sites suggest that the sabotage could have been accomplished with a smaller quantity of explosives: 50 kg or less for each line. “Fifty kilograms placed at intersections with concrete supports would probably do the trick,” said the former Navy demolition specialist who reviewed the footage. “At given pipeline pressures? Wow.” He and a German military explosive expert who also reviewed Andersson’s images agreed the bombs could potentially have been as small as 10 kg each depending on the specific type of explosives used.

Andersson’s video footage of the pipelines has convinced him that the saboteurs used slabs of explosives, rather than shaped charges, to puncture the lines. “It’s sloppily put there. It’s not professionally applied to surgically cut a hole in the pipeline or anything like that. That’s not what we’re seeing. It was crudely dug in a little bit in the mud next to the pipeline,” he said. “I think it tells a story of a diver who was in a hurry, perhaps diving without the possibility of surface decompression and thus only having 10-15 minutes to spend on the bottom.”

The former German military diver, who reviewed Andersson’s footage, agreed with his assessment that slabs of explosives rather than shaped charges were likely used at the site of the second explosion on Line A of Nord Stream 2. “With a shaped charge, we would see markers, cuts, the impact of the charge,” he said. “We would recognize it clearly. We don’t see that here. Everything speaks to a slab charge.”

With the images and footage currently available to the public, it is difficult to determine the nature of all of the bombs and whether they were identical at each site. The former U.S. Navy specialist said he would not entirely rule out that the saboteurs used cutting or shaped charges at some point in the operation because of their ability to forcefully and quickly pierce through metal and concrete. “I don’t think ‘cutting charges’ are mandatory given hydraulic pressures at depth and placement of charges,” he said. “Deformation of the pipe at a welded junction to the point of failure doesn’t require a cutting charge, in my opinion. But cutting charges make sense and are within the realm of plausibility for sure.”

Andersson also believes that his footage indicates that only one bomb was intended for each line, not two as Hersh has at times suggested. “I gave up the theory of double bombs after the expedition,” Andersson said. “I think there were just four.” All of this in turn could make it more plausible that a small team of divers could have pulled off the operation and not necessarily one sponsored or deployed by a major nation state like the U.S. or Russia. This would not exonerate any particular suspect, but it does suggest a wider circle of actors, nation states, or private groups could have pulled it off. 

Andersson may also have solved one of the several sub-mysteries of the Nord Stream saga: Why were only three of the four pipelines attacked? Proponents of the theory that Moscow did the bombing have pointed to the fact that the line closest to Russian territory was not damaged. This, they say, may be evidence Russia wanted to preserve a line in order to swiftly resume gas delivery should political winds shift on support for Ukraine or if Germany had faced a fuel or heating crisis last winter, as many analysts had predicted. Hersh, meanwhile, claimed that the bomb planted on the line closest to Russia simply failed to detonate and that the U.S. military clandestinely removed the evidence. “We were there within a day or two and picked it up and took it away so nobody else could see what kind of evidence there might be with the weapons used,” Hersh said.

Andersson believes that the saboteurs accidentally placed a second bomb on a northern section of Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That explosion did not result in the type of massive damage as the other three bombs because it had been depressurized following the initial blast 17 hours earlier. Line B of Nord Stream 2 was the only line to escape damage from the sabotage. Andersson believes the saboteurs experienced magnetic interference with their compasses when trying to place a bomb on Line B and accidentally rigged a second bomb to the A line, which was just 50 meters away.

Graphic: The Intercept / Sonar images by Patrik Juhlin of the Baltic Explorer and Erik Andersson

On June 20, Der Spiegel reported that German investigators believe the fourth line was actually rigged with a bomb, but that it was a much smaller device than the others. But an official from Nord Stream 2 AG, the company that owns the pipeline, said that line is functional and remains filled with gas, though the company intentionally reduced its pressure to half the level it functioned at prior to the blasts. “Our concern is to safeguard the integrity of the line and safeguard any risk to the environment, to understand how we could stop any further gas seepage from the lines,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

On his expedition, Andersson filmed the aftermath of the destruction caused by the first bomb of the sabotage action, the one that blew up Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline at 2:03 a.m. About 70 kilometers northeast of that blast site, Andersson shot video of a puncture wound he believes was caused by a second bomb on that line. This was the discovery he described as the “holy grail” of his mission. He was able to film it because the line had depressurized after the initial blast, so it did not break the pipeline apart, and the hole from the bomb remained intact. That hole is just 50 meters away from the other strand of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the one closest to Russia.

Andersson suspects that the saboteurs encountered magnetic anomalies on their compasses when they were under water causing them to accidentally place two bombs on Line A of Nord Stream 2. “I would have made the same mistake with my drone if the captain hadn’t told me to make small moves and always return to the starting point,” Andersson said. “The compass pointed in the exact opposite direction of what it should, and before [the captain] advised me to turn back, I was heading full speed towards the wrong pipe. They are only 50 meters apart in that location. Maybe the compass failure was because of stray electrical currents in the pipeline itself, and if that situation appeared when the perpetrators executed their mission their compasses would have led them to the wrong string. It is possible that they accidentally blew up the A-string of Nord Stream 2 twice.”

A group of journalists who filmed a documentary for the BBC and Sweden’s Expressen newspaper encountered a compass malfunction similar to the one Andersson experienced when they filmed over the site late last year, according to a source who participated in the expedition.

Poseidon’s Peter Andersson made clear he has no decisive theory on what happened but said he believes the erratic compass theory is technically plausible. “When you’re trying to put the bombs under the pipe, you need to dig a little bit with your hands. It’s not rock-solid clay or something, it’s more like silt. It’s very loose, but you need to dig a little bit. And when you do this, the visibility becomes totally zero. It’s like in a mud cloud,” he said. In this case, he said, the saboteurs would have needed to rely exclusively on the compass readings. If those were inverted, as was the case with Erik’s readings during his survey of the Nord Stream 2 lines, it is possible they mistakenly placed a bomb on the wrong line. “If you’re doing this, you’re a little bit stressed. You have no clue. It’s not like walking in the forest. You have no clue when you look up which direction you are going or which direction you came from, because you just have to look at the compass.”

The former German military diver agreed that such compass interference can happen, including near pipelines like the Nord Stream, but he said professional divers should know how to calibrate them and adjust to such anomalies.

Andreas Köhler is the senior research seismologist at Norwegian Seismic Array, a joint initiative established in 1968 between the U.S. and Norway to aid in the detection of earthquakes and nuclear explosions. He co-authored an academic research study with colleagues from Germany, Sweden, and Denmark on the Nord Stream blasts, which was presented at a geosciences conference in Vienna in April, and is working on another report with an international team. “We observe seismic signals from four explosions,” he said via email. “One in the early morning at NS2 Southeast of the island of Bornholm, and three in the afternoon Northeast of Bornholm. Our data suggests that at least two occurred at NS1, possibly all three.” Based on their modeling and available data, the scientists determined they could not rule out a second explosion on Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Andersson suspects that the possible second bomb on that line was not detected by seismologists because it occurred at the same time as much more massive explosions were taking place. Köhler, who was aware of Andersson’s expedition, declined to comment. “We can’t comment on any public or private investigation as we’re only focused on analyzing the seismological data, which is our expertise,” he said.

Another scientist involved with the international academic study did not want to be identified for fear of irritating their government. That person said that multiple nations operating in the Baltic, including the U.S., have access to a far greater array of data, including from seismic readings and hydrophones, than the scientists possess and would likely be able to determine exactly where bombs were detonated and how large they were. Those governments have not made any of that data available.

“It goes way back to at least the ’60s — where we had this program of planting underwater microphones, hydrophones, under the water, in various chokepoints around the world, under the different oceans and sea,” said James Bamford, an expert on U.S. surveillance systems who has written several books about the NSA and CIA. “So, working secretly with the Swedish government, the U.S. planted a lot of these undersea hydrophones under the Baltic Sea, and those are sitting down there. And what they do is they listen, and they’re listening constantly.”

Eric Dunham, a geophysics professor at Stanford University, has been studying the Nord Stream blasts and is trying to determine which underwater events were a result of bombs and which were caused by gas release or other aftereffects of the puncturing of the pipelines. There are many challenges involved in answering these questions — or to definitively test Andersson’s theories. “Larger explosives produce higher amplitude blast waves as well as create larger gas bubbles that oscillate more slowly. Both the blast wave and bubble oscillations create hydroacoustic and seismic waves,” Dunham said. “However, a likely complication in the case of the Nord Stream events is gas discharge from the pipes. If the gas discharge is large enough, it can alter the hydroacoustic and seismic waves that are generated.”

Andersson said the image painted by Hersh of a state of alarm among planners of the U.S. operation when one of the bombs did not explode was, to him, one of the most interesting parts of the story. “It seemed to have some account of what happened after the blast, that it was panic,” Andersson said. “Hersh referred to some panic when everything didn’t explode and that eventually they were racing with American ships to the site and picked up those bombs. And I’ve been really trying to get the actual time when this happened.” He spent months reviewing marine traffic data and satellite images for any evidence of a U.S. ship in the area to conduct the sort of crime scene cleanup that Hersh reported. “If it turns out that there actually were no unexploded bombs, then of course this is something that’s just a major hoax,” he said. When pressed, Andersson finally says, “I just don’t think it happened.”

Andersson’s current hypothesis is that a small team of divers placed a single bomb under both lines of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and mistakenly placed two bombs on Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. For yet unexplainable reasons, the first bomb on that line exploded at 2:03 a.m. and then all the other bombs exploded 17 hours later.

Erik Andersson on the Swedish island of Lyr on June 17, 2023.

Photo: Agnes Andersson

Unresolved Questions

After Andersson’s expedition, reports emerged that German investigators had determined the type of explosives used in the operation, including octogen, which is insoluble in water and not difficult to obtain, particularly for a government. The Germans have reportedly matched samples taken from the blast site with the explosive traces left on the Andromeda. Andersson said he would like to verify those reports with his own evidence. “We took some sediment samples at the place where the bomb exploded on a depressurized pipeline,” he said. “It never hurts to double check.”

Two weeks after Andersson’s expedition, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. had intelligence three months before the attack that the Ukrainian military was planning an operation to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 pipeline using a small team of six divers. The paper asserted that European intelligence reports “made clear they were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wouldn’t know about the operation.” Die Zeit then reported that last summer the CIA directly warned Ukraine not to carry out such an attack.

Though it was not his aim, Andersson’s research directly challenges Hersh’s details, as well as the narrative preferred by analysts who believe Russia carried out the bombing. In short, his findings bolster the case that Ukraine — or private actors — could be responsible for the attack. As for his confirmation bias in favor of Hersh’s narrative, the expedition changed his mind. “It’s not the main hypothesis anymore in my mind. In my main story, they were fairly primitive divers going in with a big slab of explosives. They dug in next to the pipelines and they placed them. There were four separate dives, but there was simplified logistics. It could have been a small boat, and they made a big mistake, and they ended up putting one bomb on the wrong pipe. That’s the story that is in my mind.”

Andersson’s mission did not solve the mystery of the Nord Stream bombing — he never thought it would — but the data he collected does contribute to the public understanding of what occurred.

During his expedition, Andersson also discovered a single diver’s boot near the site of the string of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was bombed but did not explode. A freelance journalist who accompanied Andersson published an article speculating about the boot’s origins, but Andersson acknowledges that the boot could have belonged to any number of actors in the highly trafficked sea and may not be connected to the bombing. He admits that experts he consulted “didn’t make much of it.” But, he says, he cannot rule out that it was lost by one of the perpetrators and may contain forensic evidence linking it to the crime. “We never expected to find any traces of the perpetrators, but nevertheless we ran across a diver’s boot,” he said. “I have talked to Captain Patrik about retrieving the boot. We can do it, if someone pays for it. That would also be a good demonstration of what it means to dive at this site.” 

Greinert, the German marine geologist, cautioned that Andersson’s expedition took place eight months after the Nord Stream bombings. During that time, multiple governments have examined the crime scene and retrieved evidence. “What was looked at here in May is no longer the original,” he said. “You have to take that into account.” He added, “From what you see, you can only draw conclusions about what happened, not who. Unless someone has left his credit card there.”

Andersson said he is keeping an open mind about all possible culprits and is eager for his data to be reviewed by more experts who can fact-check his own calculations and hypotheses. “I want to put everything in open source for people to look at,” he says. “I think if a person is doing something, you should assume innocence until they’re proven guilty. But when big governments do things, they shouldn’t have that protection.” The Baltic Sea, he adds, is a heavily surveilled and trafficked body of water. It is populated by swarms of advanced underwater monitoring devices, with the skies above and the water below patrolled by multiple nations’ naval vessels and aircraft. Andersson refuses to accept that the U.S. and its allies do not know exactly what happened last September 26, and he questions the motives behind their secrecy. “I don’t think the nationality of the divers is the huge thing,” said Andersson. “The Hersh story and Andromeda story are very similar in terms of how the bombs were placed and the size of the bombs.”

While Andersson now doubts the veracity of many details in Hersh’s account of the Nord Stream bombings, he is not yet prepared to exonerate the Biden administration. “Even if Ukraine planned and executed the operation, I can’t stop thinking that the U.S. was in on it in a way that makes them responsible,” he said. “At a minimum, Ukraine must have been certain that the U.S. would celebrate a successful sabotage of Nord Stream. And that’s what happened. Antony Blinken said it was a ‘great opportunity’ and Victoria Nuland cheered that the pipes had been turned into scrap metal. So, if Ukraine did it, they did it for the team, and if they didn’t inform their team leader, the USA, about all details, it was because that’s what was expected of them.”

The post Fishing for Secrets in the Nord Stream Abyss appeared first on The Intercept.

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on April 3, 2023, in New York City.

Photo: Getty Images

This case against Trump would be a mere footnote of history, albeit a wild one, if the U.S. actually believed in holding presidents and other top officials accountable for their crimes, including those committed in office. George W. Bush continues to enjoy his rebranded life as the nice painter man who can joke around with Ellen DeGeneres and share hugs with the Obamas. He would never engage in the garish behavior of the orange buffoon. Dick Cheney is somehow still alive and popping his head out to remind us all that his dark soul is still lurking. Democratic and Republican elites revere the vile living corpse of Henry Kissinger as an enduring and grand luminary of American greatness and strategic brilliance. The truth is that all of them should be serving substantial prison sentences for directing and orchestrating the gravest of criminal activity: war crimes.

Trump’s prosecution is not evidence that our much-vaunted justice system can actually be applied fairly and evenly to all, even a former president. What it really shows is that it’s possible to prosecute a cartoonish villain, even one who served as president, who publicly brags of his misdeeds and criminal activity and happens to be widely despised by the so-called adults in the room.

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When Barack Obama first took office, he assured the CIA that no one would be prosecuted for running a secret global kidnap and torture regime under Bush and Cheney. “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” Obama famously said. Later, he referred to the heinous program as “we tortured some folks.” Yet he made it a complete nonpriority to prosecute anyone involved with the crime he admitted took place. Previously, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi steadfastly refused to even consider impeachment proceedings against Bush. The system depends on such bipartisan impunity. No prosecutor is reviewing Trump’s rollback of U.S. limitations on killing civilians abroad, and there will be no indictment for the women and children killed under his watch. If he goes down legally, it would be for his tawdry or white collar-style infractions — possibly also for more serious cases including the January 6 Capitol riot or election tampering in Georgia — but not for any war crimes he committed as president. This we do not do. In fact, the U.S. government threatens to use force against any international body that even thinks of doing so.

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U.S. Hypocrisy on War Crimes Is a Gift to Putin

History has a proven knack for timing, and around the same moment Trump was learning of his impending criminal charges, Russian President Vladimir Putin was hit with a war crimes indictment by the International Criminal Court, or ICC. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has created an interesting predicament for the U.S. empire on these matters. President Joe Biden said last year that Putin is a war criminal and has suggested he should stand trial for the Ukraine war. But his administration has slow-walked cooperating with the ICC. In fact, the Pentagon has blocked such cooperation for fear that prosecuting Putin would set a precedent that other nations could readily cite to demand equal application of the law to U.S. officials and personnel. For his part, Putin exhibited zero concern about his indictment, essentially taking the position, “I don’t recognize the court, the indictment is a joke, and I need to get going because President Xi just arrived in Moscow for a major public display of how little both of us care about what anyone in Washington, D.C., says.”

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. government has waged a judicial proxy war over its vanquished enemies and less-powerful nations under the banner of international justice. The Nuremberg principles, which governed the trials of Nazi and Imperial Japanese war criminals, represented a powerful framework for holding even the most senior officials accountable for war crimes. But there was a crucial caveat built into the system: These principles were designed never to be applied to the U.S. and its allies.

That’s why the men who authorized and carried out the nuclear bombings of two Japanese cities were hailed as heroes instead of prosecuted as defendants. Since 2002, the U.S., by its own law, will never subject its personnel or those of its allies to the ICC and reserves the right to conduct a military operation inside the Netherlands, where the court is based, to liberate its own accused war criminals. When international prosecutors have even implied that they might be probing American war crimes, the response from the U.S. has been extreme, including imposing sanctions on the offending court officials. The U.S., like Russia and Ukraine, has not ratified the treaty establishing the ICC.

For more than two decades, the U.S. position on international prosecutions has been to oppose a permanent international court that would have jurisdiction equally over all war criminals regardless of their nationality or position of power. Instead, it has encouraged ad hoc tribunals set up to prosecute war criminals from places like the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and other African nations. The whole purpose of this from the U.S. perspective is to ensure that these laws will never be applied to Americans or their friends. And now that stance is revealing its moral bankruptcy in the face of Putin’s crimes in Ukraine. All of this has made a farce of the notion of international law.

The prosecution of Trump should thus serve as a reminder that the U.S. does not actually believe in holding its most powerful citizens accountable for even the most serious of acts. And that position has real consequences, including in how it can be weaponized by criminals like Putin.

Make no mistake, Trump should be prosecuted for a variety of crimes, committed both as a private citizen and public official. But if we want to claim that our system is exceptional, then the same fate should be brought to bear on the Bushes, Cheneys, and Kissingers of the world as well.

The post The Prosecution of Trump Is a Good First Step. Now Do Bush. appeared first on The Intercept.

The White House declined to answer questions from The Intercept about whether the U.S. has ordered its own investigation, saying only that it is supporting its allies in their individual probes. Germany, along with Denmark and Sweden, are each conducting separate investigations but say they are cooperating with one another.

In a series of letters to European governments and the United States in February, made public by Moscow earlier this month, Russian officials complained that they have been barred from examining evidence gathered from the sites where the blasts occurred. Despite Russia’s majority ownership of the pipelines, Russian officials said, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden have rejected Russia’s repeated requests for a joint investigation — confirming their “suspicions that these countries are trying to conceal evidence, or to cover up the sponsors and perpetrators of these acts of sabotages.”

Russia has been doing its own investigation into the sabotage, including underwater surveys. It has not, to date, released any forensic evidence to support its assertion that “Anglo-Saxon” powers or the U.S. were behind the explosions. At a U.N. Security Council meeting in February, Russia’s representative Vassily Nebenzia cited investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report accusing the U.S. of carrying out the attack. “This journalist is telling the truth,” he said. “This is more than just a smoking gun that detectives love in Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a basic principle of justice; everything is in your hands, and we can resolve this today.”

Denmark and Sweden have cited procedural matters and national regulations as to why they aren’t collaborating with Russia. But it’s pretty obvious that they have also adopted the position that Russia should be viewed as a suspect in the sabotage and wouldn’t want to invite it into the probe, particularly given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It should be noted that Sweden also refused an official joint investigation with its own allies from the onset, opting for a less formal cooperative arrangement. German officials have publicly confirmed their investigation into a “pro-Ukrainian” group and its possible connection to the attack on the pipeline, but have also cautioned that it could be a “false flag” intended to conceal the sponsor.

Russia’s recent maneuvers signal that it is becoming more aggressive in its rhetoric toward the two Scandinavian nations and Germany and is breaking some diplomatic protocols by making public its private communications with various nations. It is effectively arguing that the three national probes, which are backed by the U.S., are part of the Nord Stream bombing plot, and it wants to pull the U.N. in, where Russia would find a more neutral audience than NATO or the European Union. The backdrop to all of this, of course, is the public display of Russia-China unity that’s unfolded over the past year, culminating with President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow. China, which is officially co-sponsoring the Russian resolution, has said it believes the attack was carried out by a state actor and that a U.N. investigation is needed to “uncover the truth and identify those responsible.”

Underwater Evidence?

Almost immediately after the pipeline explosion on September 26, 2022, the Russian government asked the governments of Sweden, Germany, and Denmark to participate in their national investigations into “deliberate acts of sabotage” against “one of the most important investment projects of the Russian Federation.” All three governments rejected Russia’s requests, and Moscow has said that they are not sharing any meaningful information with Russian authorities.

That position is hardly surprising given the war in Ukraine and the massive NATO and European weapons shipments aimed at defeating Moscow. Russia’s ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin, has been outspoken in his criticisms of the Danish government’s refusal to cooperate with Russia. He has rejected speculation Russia was behind the attacks, saying that its ships did not have access to the waters where the explosives were placed. “The preparation of such attacks requires time and direct presence in the area of sabotage, which was carried out in the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden,” Barbin said. “The Russian side, unlike the others, did not have permission for any underwater work or research in this area before the gas pipelines were blown up.”

Russia is effectively arguing that the three national probes, which are backed by the U.S., are part of the Nord Stream bombing plot.

The sabotage of the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines occurred in the Baltic Sea waters stretching around the Danish island of Bornholm and extending to the southeast of the Swedish coast. The Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, nestled between Lithuania and Poland, is to the east of the area. The Nord Stream pipelines are majority-owned by Russia’s state-run energy firm Gazprom.

In contrast to Barbin’s contentions, a new report published by the German outlet T-Online, asserts that Russian vessels, possibly including a mini-submarine, were operating in the waters near the blast sites days before the sabotage. The article cites open-source satellite data and relied on information provided by an anonymous “intelligence source.”

On February 17, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry fired off letters not only to Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, but also to the U.S. and Norway, charging an apparent cover-up. On March 1, Russia submitted its correspondence with those nations to the U.N. Security Council as part of Moscow’s push for the U.N. to initiate its own independent probe of the Nord Stream attack.

The U.S., which opposes the resolution, has portrayed Russia’s efforts to litigate the pipeline bombing at the security council as a “blatant attempt to distract” from its yearlong war in Ukraine. In a joint letter submitted to the council in late February, Germany, Sweden and Denmark claimed, “Russian authorities have been informed regarding the ongoing investigations,” adding that the three nations “have been in dialogue regarding the investigation of the gas leaks, and the dialogue will continue to the relevant extent.”

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On February 21, a Gazprom-contracted ship doing a survey discovered an antenna-like device that Russia alleged might be a component of the materials used in the sabotage of the pipeline or part of a triggering mechanism for an unexploded bomb on an underwater pipe. “Specialists believe it might be an antenna to receive a signal to detonate an explosive device that could have been — I’m not certain, but it’s possible — planted under the pipeline system,” said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in an interview with Russian television on March 14. “It appears that several explosive devices were planted,” Putin said, adding, “Some of them went off, and some didn’t. The reasons are unclear.”

He also alleged that the device was discovered attached to an undersea pipe junction on the only string of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline where no explosion was registered last September. “We would like to receive permission from the Danish government [to] conduct the necessary examination either on our own, or jointly with them,” Putin said. “Better yet, establish an international group of experts and bomb engineers that could work at a depth like that. And if need be, to defuse the explosive device, of course, if there is one down there.” Putin said his government had made discreet inquiries to the Danish authorities proposing a joint effort. “Their response was ambiguous,” he said. “To put it bluntly, there was really no answer at all. They said that [we] need to wait.”

Denmark’s government ultimately confirmed that there was an object in the area identified by the Russians and that it was investigating. There was a flurry of activity in late March — with Danish military vessels and diving ships congregating in the waters around the site identified by the personnel aboard the Glomar Worker, the ship that reportedly found the suspicious object. On March 21, the Danish newspaper Berlingske reported that Russia believes the “antenna” was “part of a device from an explosive charge on the last of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines.” Only three of the lines were successfully damaged in the sabotage, and it has confounded researchers why one was left intact. “It is a cylindrical object about 30 centimeters high and 10-15 centimeters in diameter and was located approximately 28 kilometers from the explosion site,” Barbin said in a statement to Berlingske. “It was installed at a welding joint on the B line.”

On March 23, the Danish Energy Agency released a photograph of an object roughly fitting the dimensions offered by Russia. The object appeared to have been submerged for a long time and was covered by a layer of algae or other foliage. “It is possible that the object is a maritime smoke buoy,” asserted the Danish statement. Such devices are commonly used to mark an area where someone has gone overboard or to alert other ships to a problem. The government agency said it had invited the owners of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, effectively Russia, to participate in the salvage. The Kremlin labeled the Danish invitation “positive news.”

It’s possible that the Danish government was essentially trolling the Russians by posting the photo and making a public offering to allow Russia to participate in the retrieval of what Denmark alleged is a harmless civilian device but that Moscow implied was potentially an unexploded bomb.

In its initial news report on the Danish invitation to Russia to participate in retrieving the object, the Russian state-owned TASS news agency did not mention the possibility it was a “smoke buoy,” instead doubling down on Russian theories it may be a component of an unexploded device. “It is critically important to determine what kind of object it is, whether it is related to this terrorist act — apparently it is — and to continue this investigation,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on March 24. “And this investigation must be transparent.” Denmark has said “the object does not pose an immediate safety risk.”

That chapter of this story appears to have ended with a whimper rather than a bang. “I do not think it makes sense for us to get into that now, since one of the NATO countries, or Denmark, told us that they had already examined it, which means that the situation is not explosive,” Putin told a Russian news network on May 25, adding that it no longer was necessary for Russian specialists to participate in a retrieval operation. “Honestly speaking, for us, the point was not to incriminate someone, but to ensure security so that there would be no other explosions,” he said. “If the Danes say that it is no longer explosive, well, thank God.”

In a recent op-ed in the Danish newspaper Altinget, Barbin, the Russian ambassador, accused Denmark of engaging in speculative analysis since the explosion last September with an aim to assign blame for the attack. In Danish media, some prominent military analysts have spent considerable time discussing potential Russian culpability for blowing up its own pipeline. Barbin asserted that this “intellectual exercise, without presenting facts that should be verifiable, leads to a dead end and benefits only those who are afraid of the truth.” He said Denmark should provide an update to a variety of questions: “Which naval vessels — including military ships — were present in the sabotage area? Are there any witnesses who have been questioned and what is their testimony? Were fragments of broken gas pipelines raised and what are the results of their research? Which companies — especially foreign ones — were allowed to work in Denmark’s and Sweden’s exclusive economic zone, and were their activities audited?”

These are all fair questions, which may well be answered once the governments complete their probes. Denmark and Sweden have both remained tightlipped, and scant details have leaked from either government. While there are likely multiple layers contributing to the hyper-secrecy, the stakes are obviously high, particularly if evidence leads to a nation-state actor, such as the U.S., Russia, or Ukraine, as the perpetrator.

The Andromeda, a 50-foot recreational sailing yacht, which German investigators searched recently and suspect a six-person crew used it to sail to the Baltic Sea and plant explosives, seen on March 17, 2023 near Dranske, Germany.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

False Flag vs. “False Concoctions”

In the public discourse, Seymour Hersh’s report in February that the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up in a covert operation authorized by President Joe Biden has become something of a Rorschach test in the broader context of the war in Ukraine and the hostilities between the U.S., NATO, and Russia.

Hersh himself appears entirely unfazed by the mounting attacks on his credibility. This, he asserts, is what powerful forces do: They seek to destroy the messenger to distract from the crime. When pressed on some of the criticism of his reporting, including apparent inconsistencies raised by open-source data on ship and aircraft movements during the alleged operation, Hersh has cut his questioners short and asserted that he hasn’t even published 20 percent of what he knows or what his sources have told him. He has all but said that he used additional sources and is playing his own game of cat and mouse to protect them. Moreover, he has argued, these OSINT warriors are naive to believe that the CIA and other U.S. agencies would not have taken extensive steps to cloak the operation.

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Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot

At 85 years old, Hersh is staking his storied and well-earned reputation as one of the premiere muckrakers in modern U.S. history on the veracity of this one story. It may appear to be a crazy gamble, particularly if it is based on a single source, but it also serves as a powerful symbol of how right Hersh believes he is. In essence, Hersh is forcing the question: Do we really believe Sy Hersh would do this if it wasn’t true?

This same dynamic has played out with several of Hersh’s stories over the past decade since he left the New Yorker. It was true of his 2015 story for the London Review of Books alleging that President Barack Obama and his administration lied about almost every detail of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. And it was also the case with both his 2013 LRB article and his 2017 story for the German newspaper Welt asserting that the U.S. was falsely accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian army of using chemical weapons. Hersh’s detractors say he is not the journalist he once was and is peddling false theories based on dubious or fictional assertions from anonymous sources. Hersh maintains he got these stories right and that he continues to use the same quality of fact-checker, editor, and lawyer he had reviewing his work at the New Yorker.

In his most recent post on Substack, Hersh criticizes reports in the New York Times and multiple German media outlets that among the perpetrators of the sabotage was a “pro-Ukrainian group” that rented a private boat using false passports. Hersh alleged that the entire story, based on anonymous U.S. intelligence and German law enforcement sources, was a false-flag operation and that the assertions published by the Times and Die Zeit “originated with a group of CIA experts in deception and propaganda whose mission was to feed the newspaper a cover story—and to protect a president who made an unwise decision and is now lying about it.” Hersh writes:

“It was a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans, and aimed at discrediting your story,” I was told by a source within the American intelligence community. The disinformation professionals inside the CIA understand that a propaganda gambit can only work if those on receiving are desperate for a story that can diminish or displace an unwanted truth. And the truth in question is that President Joe Biden authorized the destruction of the pipelines and will have a difficult time explaining away his action as Germany and its Western European neighbors suffer as businesses are shuttered amid high day-to-day energy costs.

Hersh also asserted that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to the White House in early March was, in part, aimed at preparing the rollout of the cover story developed by the CIA and its German counterparts. “I was told by someone with access to diplomatic intelligence that there was a discussion of the pipeline exposé and, as a result, certain elements in the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to prepare a cover story in collaboration with German intelligence that would provide the American and German press with an alternative version for the destruction of Nord Stream 2,” Hersh writes. “In the words of the intelligence community, the agency was ‘to pulse the system’ in an effort to discount the claim that Biden had ordered the pipelines’ destruction.”

Hersh is staking his storied and well-earned reputation as one of the premiere muckrakers in modern U.S. history on the veracity of this one story.

For people who have already concluded that Hersh is either fabricating this story or relying on bad sources, his latest story is evidence that he is trapped in a hall of mirrors and seeing conspiracies in every direction he looks. Holger Stark, the lead reporter on the German story Hersh claims was the product of a CIA deception campaign, addressed Hersh in a tweet: “Sy, old colleague, I admire your historical work and it hurts tremendously to say it: But this is, at least in respect to our work at Die Zeit, complete BS. And if you write about me: call next time before you publish. You would avoid a lot of mistakes.” Stark has collaborated with The Intercept on an investigation into the U.S. drone program and Germany’s role and was one of the main German journalists reporting on Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency documents for Der Spiegel.

For those who believe that Hersh has correctly identified the perpetrator of the Nord Stream bombing — the U.S. government — it is plausible that the information fed to the Times and German news outlets about the “pro-Ukrainian group” is suspicious and part of a deception operation. Last June — two months before the Nord Stream explosions — the CIA reportedly offered German intelligence and other European governments a “strategic warning” of a potential plot to blow up the pipeline. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The warning included information about three Ukrainian nationals who were trying to rent out ships in countries bordering the Baltic Sea, including Sweden.”

It could well be that the U.S. was simply sharing its intel with allies with a direct stake in such an action. It could also be that this is where a potential deception operation involving a “pro-Ukrainian group” began. What does not seem likely is that the cover story was created in response to Hersh. More plausible, if this is indeed a cover story, was that it was planned long before Hersh wrote his story and was designed to deceive or misdirect U.S. allies and the world about who was responsible. Stark, the German journalist who heads Die Zeit’s investigative unit, said he had been working on his story, based on the German criminal probe, for months and rushed to publish only after he learned the New York Times was going to post its “pro-Ukraine group” story, which was based on the claims of anonymous U.S. intelligence operatives. Hersh later updated his piece to reflect this.

In his latest story, Hersh lambasted the U.S. press corps for refusing to ask the White House about his assertions the U.S. blew up the pipeline. “There is no evidence that any reporter assigned there has yet to ask the White House press secretary whether Biden had done what any serious leader would do: formally ‘task’ the American intelligence community to conduct a deep investigation, with all of its assets, and find out just who had done the deed in the Baltic Sea. According to a source within the intelligence community, the president has not done so, nor will he. Why not? Because he knows the answer.”

I asked the White House Hersh’s specific question and also for comment on Hersh’s assertions about the private meeting between Biden and Scholz and the CIA manufacturing a cover story. In a statement, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson did not directly address any of my questions. “These stories are totally false concoctions,” Watson said. “We can say categorically that the United States was not involved in the Nord Stream explosions in any way. We continue to support efforts with our allies and partners to get to the bottom of what happened.”

During Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s appearance before the House Committee on Appropriations on March 23, Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, asked Blinken: “You’re now in a formal setting. Can you assure the world that no agency of the U.S. government blew up those pipelines or facilitated that action?”

“Yes, I can,” Blinken replied.

Update: March 25, 2023, 8:00 p.m. ET
This piece has been updated with comments made by Putin on March 25 saying Russia would not retrieve the underwater object.

Update: March 27, 2023, 3:57 p.m. ET
On Monday, Russia’s UN resolution calling for an independent investigation of Nord Stream sabotage failed. Russia, China, and Brazil voted in favor. The other 12 council members abstained.

The post Russia Calls for U.N. Investigation of Nord Stream Attack, as Hersh Accuses White House of False Flag appeared first on The Intercept.

The question of whether Hersh’s story is accurate — either in whole or in part — is of monumental significance, and there are some issues related to this story that have not received as much attention as they deserve. Among these are questions surrounding the legal and constitutional framework the Biden administration would have used if, as Hersh’s source alleges, Biden directly ordered the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines. There is also an emerging counternarrative to Hersh’s reporting from U.S. intelligence that warrants scrutiny, both on its merits and for how it might relate to Hersh’s story.

“A Pro-Ukrainian Group”

On March 7, the New York Times and the German newspaper Die Zeit both published stories that thicken the plot. The Times story was based on a narrative clearly being pushed by U.S. intelligence sources that “a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack.” The Times asserted that a “review of newly collected intelligence suggests they were opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation.” The report was spartan in its specifics, used no named sources, and seemed reminiscent of other efforts by anonymous U.S. intelligence sources to launder a narrative under the guise of a news scoop. “U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains,” the report said. “They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services.”

The Times report was almost immediately contested by reporting in CNN and the Washington Post, downplaying the certainty of U.S. officials that the intelligence was accurate. An unnamed senior administration official told the Washington Post, “My understanding is that we don’t find this conclusive.” The Ukrainian government has denied any connection to the operation, saying it “absolutely did not participate in the attack on Nord Stream 2.”

Die Zeit’s investigation, conducted with public broadcasters ARD and SWR, was based on a German criminal probe led by the federal police. Die Zeit reports that its journalists identified the boat that was allegedly used in the operation. “It is said to be a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians. According to the investigation, the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman,” according to the report. “The group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor, who are said to have transported the explosives to the crime scenes and placed them there. The nationality of the perpetrators is apparently unclear.” They allegedly “used professionally forged passports, which are said to have been used, among other things, to rent the boat.”

In response to the story, Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius said, “We need to clearly differentiate whether it was a Ukrainian group that acted on the orders of Ukraine or … without the government’s knowledge.”

These new reports offer no concrete evidence or credible explanation for how this alleged group may have conducted the sabotage operation.

Die Zeit’s story appears to challenge Hersh’s central narrative, which offered a mass of detailed information about how exactly the U.S. allegedly carried out its attack on the pipeline, including details about the specific forces and ships involved in the operation and a technical description of how they planted and detonated the explosives. But these new reports do not actually contradict Hersh’s story, because they offer no concrete evidence or credible explanation for how this alleged group may have conducted the sabotage operation.

The German report, written by Holger Stark, made no allegation of any nation-state involvement in the attack but noted that “it is not excluded that this is also a false flag operation,” which “means that traces could also have been deliberately laid that point to Ukraine as the culprit. However, the investigators have apparently found no evidence that confirms such a scenario.” In an interview with a German radio station, Pistorius said he cannot rule out a “false flag” operation “to blame pro-Ukrainian groups and make it look that way.” That probability, he asserted, was “equally high.”

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Researchers specializing in open-source intelligence, or OSINT, have loudly concluded that Hersh’s reporting does not add up and is easily debunked by tracking publicly available data on the movements of ships, aircraft, and other vessels at the time of the alleged operation. Hersh has summarily dismissed these critics, asserting that U.S. intelligence understands quite well the need to circumvent such OSINT vulnerabilities and had taken measures — including, perhaps, the disabling of location transponders — to ensure the integrity of the operation. “If you’re in the intelligence community, you’ve been running covert ops for years,” Hersh said, “certainly, the first thing you look at is how to take care of open-source people, make them think what happened isn’t happening.”

Some of the doubts and criticism aimed at Hersh’s piece, especially the fact that it appears to rely on a single source, are valid, but Hersh has a long track record of breaking major stories about covert operations and U.S. war crimes. And he has frequently proved his critics wrong. Hersh’s narrative also has the benefit of abundant public circumstantial evidence in the form of statements by the president and his advisers appearing to threaten to take out the pipeline and then gloating once it was destroyed. The U.S. had the motive and the means to carry out the operation.

When Hersh contacted the Biden administration for comment on his story, a White House spokesperson said, “This is false and complete fiction,” while the CIA told him, “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

The New York Times has not published serious reporting — or any reporting — on the substance of Hersh’s allegations or the denials from the White House and other government agencies. But in its piece on the “pro-Ukrainian group” the Times mentions Hersh’s report in the 23rd graph of the story. “Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of Mr. Biden. In making his case, Mr. Hersh cited the president’s preinvasion threat to ‘bring an end’ to Nord Stream 2, and similar statements by other senior U.S. officials,” the report said. “U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.”

In an interview on “The Daily,” a New York Times podcast, one of the reporters on the story, Julian Barnes, was asked if he knows who did the bombing. “Yeah, we think we do know,” he replied. But later in the nearly 30-minute discussion, he said, “I should be very clear that we know really very little, right? This group remains mysterious and it remains mysterious, not just to us, but also to the U.S. government officials that we have spoken to. They know that the people involved were either Ukrainian or Russian or a mix. They know that they are not affiliated with the Ukrainian government, but they know they’re also anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine.”

Barnes described the evolution of the pro-Ukraine story as beginning with the Times reporters speaking to U.S. intelligence officials. He said that initially the Times had been focusing its probe into the bombing on the Russian and Ukrainian governments, but that it was “just hitting dead end after dead end,” so the reporters “started asking a different question: ‘Could this have been done by nonstate actors? Could this have been done by a group of individuals who were not working for a government?’” Barnes added, “The more we talked to officials who had access to intelligence, the more we saw this theory gaining traction.” Barnes did not mention Hersh’s story on the podcast.

Despite the claim that this story emerged from a speculative hunch on the part of the Times reporters, it certainly appears to be an effort by some forces within U.S. intelligence to rework and spin the previous narrative that sought to imply that Russia itself had blown up the pipeline. Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and other nations have spent months investigating the explosion. The Times story could be an indication that after doing forensic and other investigations, Washington’s allies do not believe that Russia was behind the attack. Several European media outlets, including the Times of London, reported that European investigators zeroed in on the alleged pro-Ukrainian group very soon after the explosion, despite the fact that it only hit the news media in the past week. It may turn out that this is precisely what happened, and that the U.S. had nothing to do with the operation. But it would be unwise — and would require a complete disregard of U.S. history — to assume without evidence that the inferences of anonymous U.S. officials are genuine.

“I don’t know what happened here but it would be naive and irresponsible for journalists to take U.S. intel agencies’ claims at face value,” said Jameel Jaffer, a former lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who spent years battling the Bush and Obama administrations over issues of secrecy and national security.

Floating Narratives

If the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was, as Hersh alleges, directed by the U.S., then the leaked suggestion that the culprits were a “pro-Ukrainian group” could indicate a nascent effort at floating a cover story. There is also the possibility that some elements within the U.S. government ran a covert operation using deniable assets, such as Ukrainian “partisans” operating with fake passports. Further, “pro-Ukrainian group” is so vague that it could apply to an infinite number of actors, including former U.S. military or intelligence personnel or those of an allied nation. Die Zeit reported that the alleged perpetrators rented a yacht from a Polish company owned by two Ukrainians. According to the report, the group failed to clean the yacht they allegedly used in the operation, leading investigators to discover residue from explosives on a table in the cabin. This is either unbelievably sloppy tradecraft, evidence of total amateurism, or an intentional “clue” left with the intent to deceive. The U.S. or another nation could have used such a team as a patsy operation to mislead investigators and cover the tracks of the actual perpetrators.

There are recent precedents for foreign actors taking credit for U.S. operations to conceal Washington’s involvement.

No one has claimed responsibility for this attack, but there are recent precedents for foreign actors taking credit for U.S. operations to conceal Washington’s involvement. This was the case when President Barack Obama authorized a cruise missile attack in Yemen in December 2009, which killed more than three dozen people, most of them women and children. The Yemeni government announced it had conducted the strikes, a claim later proven false when a journalist photographed the remnants of U.S. cluster munitions. In fact, this practice of cloaking the U.S. role in drone and other airstrikes in Yemen was common during the Obama administration.

European news outlets have been aggressively pursuing the story of the private boat that U.S. and German intelligence have suggested was used by the “pro-Ukrainian group.” Some of the open-source researchers who criticized Hersh’s version of events have also identified inconsistencies and problems with the initial reporting on this new theory. Among these are questions of how such a small vessel could have transported the quantity of explosives allegedly used in the attack on the Nord Stream, the extreme difficulty such a small team on a yacht would face in pulling off the operation, and the perplexing narrative about the alleged land route they used to deliver the explosives to the ship. Some analysts have also raised doubt that a small team of divers would have the technical capacity to have pulled off such a complicated and deep dive or why they would choose a difficult access point to place the explosives.

I am not saying I believe any specific theory about the Nord Stream explosion at present, including Hersh’s. But I am not about to denounce Hersh’s reporting. He has repeatedly been accused of being wrong, only later to be proven right. That was true of My Lai, it was true of the CIA’s domestic spying in the 1970s, and it was true of the secret plans to manufacture a “weapons of mass destruction” threat in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and countless other stories throughout his career. I am confident that if Hersh publishes a story, he believes that it is true and that he has a source or sources he has deemed reliable who are providing information. That does not mean that he or his sources are always right about every detail. In that sense, the ultimate question of credibility for Hersh’s story rests exclusively on his source’s level of direct access to the planning and their personal firsthand knowledge about the execution of the operation.

Like many reasonable observers who understand the history of U.S. covert actions, I am following the developments closely, with an open mind. It is possible for a journalist to get many details correct while also being fed some unreliable information by sources who are passing off speculation as fact. This is one of the major risks of single-sourced reporting, no matter how reliable the source is. Very few people in government are privy to every single detail of a covert operation, and I know from experience that sometimes sources know a lot about some aspects of a program or operation but are trying to fill in the blanks about the aspects they do not know directly. This is not done out of malice or with an intent to deceive, but because that’s how many people operate. Sometimes it is difficult to parse fact from speculation with sensitive sources who are reluctant to talk, especially if the source does not make clear what they know to be true and what they suspect to be true.

It is also possible that sources themselves have been fed bad or incomplete information and pass it along sincerely believing it to be true. There are many instances too where assertions confirmed by more than one source and published by major publications with substantial resources turn out to be false. Despite getting some details wrong, it is still possible for a reporter to get the overarching conclusion right.

It remains conceivable that Hersh correctly identified the sponsor of the Nord Stream attack, even if some of the details provided by his source were speculative, inaccurate, or based on outdated operational plans.

President Joe Biden, right, during a news conference with Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7, 2022.

Photo: Leigh Vogel/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Oversight and Authority

There is another important set of questions to consider: If the U.S. did carry out the strike on the Nord Stream with Biden’s direct authorization, under what authority would the operation have been conducted? Under what legal basis would Biden and his administration have to keep even senior congressional leadership out of the loop and then blatantly lie about it to the public?

It’s worth noting that as a young senator, Biden played a role in creating the permanent congressional intelligence committees and in crafting laws regulating the oversight of the CIA and covert actions in the aftermath of the Nixon-era lawlessness.

First, let’s review what Hersh reported about the authorities at play in the alleged operation. “The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. ‘This is not kiddie stuff,’ the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, ‘It’s an act of war.’”

According to Hersh, things changed after remarks Biden made on February 7, 2022, as he stood next to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the East Room at the White House. “If Russia invades … there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” said Biden. “We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.” Hersh’s source said the framework for the operation shifted to a military umbrella because senior CIA officers determined that destroying the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.” Hersh writes, “The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, ‘There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it — but it still had to be secret.’”

“There is supposed to be at least some congressional notification of any covert action.”

I consulted several constitutional law scholars and experts on U.S. covert actions to explore the legal framework within which the Biden administration would have needed to operate to carry out such an operation. All of the sources I spoke with said it would be a serious violation of law if such a covert action were not briefed to at least some senior U.S. lawmakers. At a minimum, the operation would need to be reported to the so-called Gang of Eight — the House speaker and minority leader, the Senate majority and minority leaders, the chair and ranking members of both intelligence committees — either beforehand or, if necessary for the integrity of the operation, shortly thereafter. In that case, the president would be required to provide an explanation as to why Congress was not briefed ahead of time. In rare cases, presidents have chosen to brief only four members of Congress, though the practice has no basis in U.S. statute. “There is supposed to be at least some congressional notification of any covert action,” said Steven Aftergood, who served as director of the Government Secrecy Project at the Federation of American Scientists from 1991-2021. “If notification is not provided in advance, it must still be given in ‘a timely fashion.’ Failure to do so would be a violation of law.”

Within the U.S. laws governing military and intelligence operations, there are gray areas. Title 50 of the U.S. code sets out the rules and structures for intelligence operations, while Title 10 covers military actions. The code under which a particular operation is performed has serious implications for oversight and accountability. A covert action requires the drafting of a presidential “finding,” or memorandum of notification, and the White House must brief the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on its contents. This briefing must occur before the covert action unless there are “extraordinary circumstances.” The requirements for congressional involvement were established to prevent scandals such as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and other dubious CIA operations.

Military doctrine defines another class of activities, “clandestine operations,” in which the point of secrecy is to protect the integrity of the mission, not to conceal its sponsor, the U.S. government. The military may conduct operations that are both covert and clandestine, but these are rare. Unlike covert actions, clandestine operations do not require a presidential finding if “future hostilities” are “anticipated” in the country where they are taking place. Nor is the administration required to report the operation to Congress. Such operations are defined as “traditional military activities,” or TMAs, and offer the intelligence committees no real-time oversight rights. Under U.S. law, the military is not required to disclose the specific actions of an operation, but the U.S. role in the “overall operation” should be “apparent” or eventually “acknowledged.”

Hersh’s source said the “covert action” was officially changed to a U.S. military operation after Biden’s public threat and that it used regular U.S. Navy divers instead of those from U.S. Special Operations Command “whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance,” thus eliminating the reporting requirement to the intelligence committees. “What qualifies as TMA has long been a subject of push and pull between Congress and the executive,” said University of Houston constitutional law scholar Emily Berman. “So the bottom line is that what rules apply would depend on which authority the President relied on to carry out the mission, which will often not be evident.”

“To the extent that ‘traditional military activities’ can look a lot like covert actions, congressional notification is only required under Title 50 (covert action) operations, not Title 10 (military) ones,” explained Melinda Haas, an assistant professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, in an email. “It isn’t possible to know up front, however, whether a certain behavior is considered a ‘covert action.’”

The military, while not subject to the select committees on intelligence, does have its own reporting requirements to the Senate and House Armed Services committees. While there is a debate about what sort of congressional oversight would be required if the action was done under a military umbrella, it would be brazen for Biden’s administration and the Pentagon leadership to refuse to do so. Even the notoriously secretive and anti-oversight George W. Bush administration briefed four members of Congress, including Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., in January 2003 about the existence of CIA torture videos. It is also true that the CIA subsequently spied illegally on Senate torture investigators.

Robert Litt, the former general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, told me that he thought it was unlikely that the U.S. carried out the operation, but that if it did so, regardless of which U.S. forces performed such an operation, it would still “fall within a well-established statutory framework for covert action.” Litt said, “If a ‘highly classified intelligence operation’ is intended to affect conditions abroad and not to be acknowledged, it is a covert action under the law, and has to be treated as such. I don’t think this would be considered to fall within the traditional military activity exemption even though that may be what [Hersh’s] source is imprecisely referring to.”

If, as Hersh’s source alleges, no members of Congress were read into this operation, it would mean that Biden essentially adopted an Iran-Contra-style strategy of boxing out legislative oversight entirely, potentially setting himself up for a public scandal of epic proportions. There is, however, precedent for this. A 1986 memo prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan administration argued that the president was “within his authority in maintaining the secrecy” of a covert operation “from Congress until such time as he believed that disclosure to Congress would not interfere with the success of the operation.”

While this is not unfathomable in light of U.S. history, that likelihood seems low when you look at the vast number of agencies and people within the U.S. government — including an interagency working group with people from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury departments — who were allegedly working on the plans. Not to mention a foreign government and a cover story of a highly publicized NATO training exercise. This would mean mid-level U.S. government bureaucrats and foreign officials were read into the operation, but not senior members of Congress with statutory oversight authorities and sworn secrecy oaths.

“I believe that if this activity had been done by the U.S., it is almost certain that at least the Gang of Eight was informed, and by now probably the full committees as well,” said Litt. “Given the requirement of congressional briefing, the likelihood of leaks, and the political situation in Washington, I would doubt that the president would take the risk of actually lying had this been a U.S. operation.” Litt added: “My bottom line is that I think it is highly unlikely that if the U.S. did this Congress was not briefed.”

Beyond the issue of whether Congress was informed of the alleged operation, it’s hard to imagine a scenario, if Hersh’s source is accurate, in which no one involved eventually confirms at least parts of Hersh’s reporting, or intentionally or unwittingly leaks details and backs up the claims. According to Hersh’s source, there were dissenters within the CIA and State Department who said, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”

Hersh has been confronted with this exact question before, including after his 2015 story challenging the official narrative of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was published. “How many people do you think in the American government in the years 2001, 2002, 2003 leading up to the late March attack on Iraq knew that the government was misrepresenting the intelligence on the WMD?” Hersh asked in an interview with NPR’s On the Media, adding that potentially thousands of government employees and contractors also knew that the National Security Agency was engaged in warrantless collection of the communications of American citizens prior to Edward Snowden’s revelations, but kept silent. “We’ve demonstrated that you can cow the bureaucracy, you can cow people to an extraordinary length in this society to the length where nobody’s going to go public on it,” Hersh added.

If the U.S. did blow up the pipeline, it could be that the administration did in fact inform some congressional leaders and they are assisting in concealing the operation. “I don’t know of any rule that would prevent the President from denying involvement in an operation that was designed to remain unacknowledged, as covert actions are,” said Berman.

“As for lying to the public, I’m not aware of any law that would prevent the President from doing that (there is certainly plenty of recent precedent for presidential prevarication), although more typically the approach is when asked about a covert action is not to comment,” Litt wrote in an email. He added that “the military’s position is that they will not affirmatively lie about military action.”

Regardless of the U.S. military’s official position on lying about its activities, it is undeniable that military officials have lied or misled the public at various points throughout U.S. history, including the recent case of an August 2021 drone strike in Afghanistan that killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children. Whether it is lying or misdirecting the public in the Nord Stream case obviously depends on the veracity of the information provided by Hersh’s source. When the intent is to deceive an “enemy” nation or hostile force, rather than the U.S. public or Congress, the military has extensive guidelines for doing so.

Aftergood points out that there is no U.S. law or rule prohibiting the government from promoting a false alternative explanation to conceal an operation. “This is an established practice in military operations and intelligence activities where it is often known as ‘cover and deception,’” he said. “Sometimes, in order to maintain the operational security of X, you have to declare that it is actually Y.”

The post Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot appeared first on The Intercept.

Citizens have every right to question the role of their governments, particularly in times of war. Some of the dynamics around policing criticism of Zelenskyy or the Ukrainian government or the U.S. support for it are reminiscent of the efforts to stifle criticism of Israel through charges of antisemitism. Not only is this an intellectually bankrupt line of attack, but it also runs contrary to the vital principle of free debate in democratic societies. It also seeks to relegate to a dungeon of insignificance the vast U.S. record of foreign policy, military, and intelligence catastrophes as well as its abuses and crimes by pretending that only lackeys for Moscow would dare question our role in a foreign conflict on the other side of the globe.

Russia is fighting not just Ukraine, but also NATO infrastructure.

Russia is hardly a victim here. Vladimir Putin seems comfortable abetting a new cold war, and his unjustified attack against Ukraine has offered the U.S. and NATO a golden ticket to ratchet up militarism, European defense spending, and weapons production. At the same time, it is true, as Moscow alleges, that Russia is fighting not just Ukraine, but also NATO infrastructure. It is also true that prominent sectors of the U.S. security state want this war primarily to bleed Russia, and last year the White House had to walk back President Joe Biden’s off-the-cuff remark about Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” The whole enterprise is an incredible boondoggle for the war industry, which now gets no-bid contracts baked in to build the defense “industrial base.”

The idea that Putin could not have foreseen the likelihood of NATO coming to Ukraine’s defense — particularly with Biden, not Donald Trump, in the White House— is ludicrous. For years, through his actions and words, Putin has made clear that he has no respect for Ukraine as a sovereign nation, a sentiment that has only become more entrenched over the past year. The U.S. and its NATO allies, for their part, poked at Putin in an effort to back him into a corner he ultimately decided he would not accept. Still, he alone chose the path of invading a neighboring country, and for that, Putin should answer. At the same time, discussing the role of Western powers in bringing the world to this point should not be taboo, nor should it be used as a prompt to smear those raising relevant issues as doing Moscow’s bidding.

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Against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, the U.S. has steadily intensified its preparations for a potential war with China. Biden recently declared, “I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War” with China, yet the U.S. posture has for years indicated the exact opposite. Japan recently announced that it is looking to purchase from the U.S. as many as 500 of the newest Tomahawk cruise missiles. The long-range weapons have, to date, only been available to the U.S. and Britain, but Japan, at the urging of Washington, has been deliberately increasing its defense spending and military capacity. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin praised Tokyo’s move toward the NATO goal of its members spending 2 percent of their GDP on military, saying it underscored “Japan’s staunch commitment to upholding the international rules-based order and a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Meanwhile, the extremist right-wing government of Israel is on the war path against Iran and may well be actively planning for a military attack in the future. It also seems to be simply a matter of time before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launches yet another full-scale military onslaught against the Palestinians. Throughout the world, the U.S. and its allies are engaged in a gaslighting campaign of doublespeak as they engage in the very actions they claim their adversaries are plotting. In the National Security Strategy report released in October, the Biden administration declared that “the post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” It stated bluntly that the U.S. “military’s role is to maintain and gain warfighting advantages while limiting those of our competitors.”

We are in the midst of a perilous moment in world history, one that demands a robust debate about the motives and actions of powerful nation states. There should be more debate, not less. Groupthink does a disservice to a democratic society, particularly when the world is closer to the threat of nuclear war than at any time in recent history.

Members of the U.S. Army take part in the NATO military exercise “Iron Wolf 2022-II” at a training range in Pabrade, north of Vilnius, Lithuania, on Oct. 26, 2022.

Photo: Mindaugas Kulbis/AP

Brutal Anniversaries

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine passed the one-year mark in late February and came just a month before the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war based on lies and waged with a gratuitous and sustained brutality. Biden not only supported that war, but as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the lead up to “shock and awe,” he also helped facilitate it. The neocons and cruise-missile liberals who got it wrong on Iraq should employ a bit more humility in being so certain their analysis of global affairs is sounder than that of critics who have consistently gotten it right about American wars when it mattered — before they started.

One of the most striking aspects about the past year is how little debate we’ve seen over U.S. and NATO policy.

None of this is to say that there is only one right position on Ukraine. Nor does it mean that there are not some deranged people who are actively cheering on Putin as he wages an illegitimate and heinous war. But one of the most striking aspects about the past year is how little debate we’ve seen over U.S. and NATO policy. The role of Western powers in the war in Ukraine will have far-reaching consequences for global security and relations among nations. It will impact the stability of the U.S. economy and is setting precedents that will have repercussions, including on matters of international law. It also will legitimize a new set of norms permitting proxy warfare and will encourage malign actors to use the “Ukraine principle” to their advantage.

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It is unfortunate that the most prominent political critique of U.S. policy in Ukraine from official quarters emanates from a handful of congressional Republicans whose dominant rationale for their position is a rancid potpourri of “America First” principles and warped Trumpist ideology. At its best, some Republican opposition is rooted in a libertarian anti-interventionism. Overwhelmingly, U.S. liberals, neoconservatives, and old-school Republicans have fallen into line with the Biden administration policy. Even the mildest effort at dissent in Congress has been ridiculed and calls for a negotiated end to the war retracted.

Standing alongside Zelenskyy on his recent trip to Kyiv, Biden celebrated the massive scope of military support from the U.S. and its NATO allies, declaring “that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.” Biden announced new rounds of support to Kyiv on top of the more than $30 billion given to date in weapons and other military aid. After a series of “war games” with Ukrainian military officials this week at a U.S. base in Germany, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, said the U.S. and NATO “can keep going as long as necessary.” Such open-ended commitments from U.S. officials are bolstered by a recent shift in U.S. defense spending and procurement authorities reminiscent of the Cold War. 

During her trip to Ukraine soon after Biden’s, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asserted that U.S. support for Ukraine “is motivated, first and foremost, by a moral duty to come to the aid of a people under attack.” American officials should not be able to utter such phrases without answering for why this supposed moral duty does not apply to the Palestinians or why this moral duty somehow disappears when the U.S. wages offensive wars or supports its allies in their own campaigns of mass slaughter.

The argument over whether the U.S. and NATO should be giving military aid is a trap because it’s presented as a binary choice.

Let there be no doubt: Putin should immediately stop this insanity in Ukraine. This is a gruesome and murderous campaign he’s engaged in, and the death toll is shocking. The Biden administration should do what we are constantly told is untenable, unrealistic, or characterized as appeasement: make a negotiated end to the war the top priority. China has recently indicated a greater willingness to play a direct role. This is an opportunity for a major reset among nations. But that won’t happen because we lack leaders in the U.S. who have such bold vision, leaders willing to shift from the dominant imperial posture. So we are stuck with the current prospect of countless more Ukrainian civilians dying. In the face of that, how does one tell the Ukrainians not to fight? How does one say, “No, we won’t give you weapons, but we also are against what the aggressor is doing”? It’s a reasonable position for people watching this bloodbath to want to do everything possible to help Ukrainians defend themselves, and supporting weapons transfers to Ukraine does not make you a pawn of the U.S. imperial state. But the argument over whether the U.S. and NATO should be giving military aid is a trap because it’s presented as a binary choice. What has our government done to seek alternative paths? Has it exhausted all diplomatic efforts?

Many of the supporters of NATO policy in Ukraine act as if Zelenskyy’s wishes and requests should govern the decisions of the U.S. and European nations. This is dangerous. At times, Biden has rightly pumped the brakes on sending sophisticated or high-powered weapons systems, only to later relent under pressure. Momentum is now building in Congress and among some influential liberal media voices to push Biden to authorize the transfer of F-16 fighter jets. A similar campaign has been waged to give Ukraine top-tier U.S. weaponized drones. The consequences of these decisions will impact the whole world, and people not only have a right to debate the policy, but they are also right to do so.

Questioning the current U.S. policy is not appeasement or Russian puppetry, particularly because the false choice — let Putin conquer Ukraine completely, or flood Ukraine with Western weapons — is so insidiously and dishonestly pushed by the elite power structure in Washington D.C. and Europe. The fact is that prominent U.S. officials and pundits have stated from the very early stages of this war that Ukraine is a convenient battleground to debilitate Russia and hopefully end Putin’s reign, which is very different from a “moral” duty to protect the defenseless.

The post The Disturbing Groupthink Over the War in Ukraine appeared first on The Intercept.

Rescuers work to free victims from the rubble of a residential apartment complex that was hit by Russian forces in Dnipro, Ukraine, on Jan. 14, 2023.

Photo: Wojciech Grzedzinski/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

The United States and its NATO allies are doubling down on their support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s assertion that Russia can and will be defeated “on the battlefield.” Over the past year, there has been an open spigot delivering tens of billions of dollars in weapons and other military hardware. As the war has dragged on, earlier hesitation expressed by leaders of NATO states, mainly in the U.S. and Germany, over transferring more potent weapons systems has been overtaken by a zealous policy of NATO escalation.

It seems clear at this point that the Biden administration’s position is that increasing Ukraine’s military capacity is a win-win scenario: Even if Kyiv does not expel Moscow’s forces and retake of all of its territory — including Crimea — as Zelenskyy has stated is the central objective, the proxy war will nonetheless deliver a series of potent punches to the vital organs that constitute Vladimir Putin’s reign. Russia will continue to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers and deplete its economic and military capacity — and Putin will be weakened internally and internationally. The goal is that one way or another, Putin loses without having to sacrifice U.S. or NATO lives.

But what if none of that happens? What if Putin survives this brutal war with his grip on power intact? What if Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was right when he said last November that a Ukrainian victory “is maybe not achievable through military means”? What if Ukraine is forced to accept a negotiated solution where it formally concedes the loss of its territory? What type of accountability could then be brought to bear for Putin’s decision to invade a neighboring country?

President Joe Biden has already gone on record as saying that Putin is a “war criminal” and has said evidence needs to be gathered for “a war crime trial.” The only conceivable scenario in which Putin ends up standing trial is after a revolution or coup in Russia that deposes him. Speculative fiction could be written about what might happen at such an implausible trial, including a defense that seeks to obviate the charges by putting decades of unprosecuted U.S. war crimes, including the invasion of Iraq, in the crossfire. The fact is that short of a total defeat of Putin in Ukraine that leads to his downfall, such talk is just fantasy.

There has never been a trial of a figure as powerful as Putin. But conceding Biden’s assertion that Putin is a war criminal, in what venue would this trial be held? Under what auspices? Who would be the judges? What would give the court its legitimacy in the eyes of the world community, not just NATO nations?

The logical venue to prosecute such crimes would be at the International Criminal Court. The ICC, which was initiated in 1998 for precisely such situations, has charged or prosecuted heads of state and other senior officials from a range of nations, though it has overwhelmingly focused on African nations and has never indicted a leader of a major world power. While the ICC has launched an investigation into crimes committed during the war in Ukraine, neither Kyiv nor Moscow have ratified the treaty recognizing the jurisdiction of the court. The ICC does not have jurisdiction over the crime of aggression in Ukraine, in large part because the U.S. and its allies pressured the ICC to amend its rules to prohibit prosecuting personnel from nations that do not formally recognize the court. Given that Russia is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, it is unlikely a criminal referral to the court would ever pass. Moreover, the U.S., India, and China have also refused to ratify the ICC’s Rome Statute. That such powerful countries refuse to subject themselves to the court has rendered the ICC impotent in the face of their crimes, no matter how blatant.

These factors explain why Ukraine and its allies have been calling for a “special tribunal” to prosecute senior Russian officials for the crime of aggression, even if they have to do some trials in absentia. In January, the EU Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution asserting “the urgent need” for European nations “to push for the creation of a special international tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression against Ukraine perpetrated by the political and military leadership of the Russian Federation and its allies.”

The resolution argued that “the establishment of this special tribunal for the crime of aggression would send a very clear signal to both Russian society and the international community that Putin and the Russian political and military leadership can be convicted for the crime of aggression in Ukraine; underscores that the establishment of this tribunal would also be a clear signal to the political and business elite in Russia and Russian allies that it is no longer feasible for the Russian Federation under Putin’s leadership to return to ‘business as usual’ with the West.”

Such a venue, established at the behest of nation states that are hostile to Russia and its president and whose lawmakers have included a guilty verdict in their demands for trials, would be summarily dismissed by Moscow as a biased court plotting a predetermined outcome. Just replace the word Ukraine with Iraq, Russia with the United States, Russian with American, and Putin with Bush, and ask if the U.S. government would have recognized the legitimacy of such a tribunal established to bring accountability for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

A visit by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor to Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, on April 13, 2022.

Photo: Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

The brutal war in Ukraine is once again highlighting the paltry state of affairs when it comes to international justice. In the aftermath of World War II, the most powerful nations of the world declared themselves above the law and immune from prosecution. The tone for this was set with the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. While the public prosecutions of Nazi and Japanese war criminals were essential and justified, they set a standard that only the vanquished would be held accountable. No American ever faced an indictment before a world court for the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan or the firebombing of Tokyo or the carpet bombing of Dresden. Stalin was never hauled before a tribunal to answer for his voluminous mass atrocities. This is also why no U.S. officials have ever been prosecuted for decades of war crimes across the globe, from Korea to Vietnam to Central America to Iraq and beyond.

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The official U.S. position on the ICC and international justice is an extremist one. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute committing the U.S. to complying with the ICC, but only after the treaty was ratified by a two-thirds vote in the U.S. Senate. Under the bipartisan American exceptionalism doctrine, this would never happen. In 2002, with a sizable bipartisan majority, Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, effectively obliterating any possibility of the U.S. ratifying the treaty.

Signed into law by President George W. Bush in August 2002, the legislation is infamously known in the human rights community as the Hague Invasion Act. That’s because the law authorizes the president of the United States “to use all means necessary and appropriate,” including military force, to liberate a U.S. official, soldier, or contractor “who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.” The law bluntly states, “The United States will not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over United States nationals.”

The drafters of the legislation argued, “In addition to exposing members of the Armed Forces of the United States to the risk of international criminal prosecution, the Rome Statute creates a risk that the President and other senior elected and appointed officials of the United States Government may be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.” It also lists as “persons authorized to be freed,” through U.S. actions, should they find themselves facing war crimes charges: “military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally (including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand), or Taiwan.”

To put a fine point on this codifying of double standards, the law made clear the U.S. would still support ad hoc tribunals established to prosecute nonallied war criminals. “Nothing in this title shall prohibit the United States from rendering assistance to international efforts to bring to justice Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovic [sic], Osama bin Laden, other members of Al Queda [sic], leaders of Islamic Jihad, and other foreign nationals accused of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.”

In 2002, Biden was one of only 19 U.S. senators to vote against the Hague Invasion Act. Democratic luminaries such as Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, and Chuck Schumer all voted in favor of the Republican-sponsored amendment. But Biden’s opposition was of a tactical nature. He said that while he agreed with the thrust of the legislation, he could not support its most extreme provisions. “As a constitutional matter, I am unwilling to give the president such a blank check to invade the Netherlands — where this court will be located,” Biden said. “Only the Congress has the power to authorize such use of force, and we should not do so in advance, without knowing all the circumstances.”

In his floor speech describing his opposition, which Biden delivered as the U.S. was beginning its preparations to invade Iraq, he made clear that he did not want the U.S. subjected to the jurisdiction of the ICC “as it is currently constituted.” Among Biden’s objections was a provision that allowed for prosecuting the crime of aggression, which the ICC defines as “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, integrity or independence of another State.” Biden also objected to the ICC having jurisdiction over “nonparties,” nations that have not ratified the treaty.

International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan and Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova attend the Ukraine Accountability Conference in The Hague, Netherlands, on July 14, 2022.

Photo: Selman Aksunger/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Two decades later, these issues are at the center of the discussion over what body would have legitimate jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Ukraine, including the crime of aggression through invasion of a sovereign nation. For years, diplomats and U.N. officials have tried to tweak the Rome Statute to satisfy more powerful nations — namely the U.S. and Britain — who do not want their own wars subjected to its jurisdiction. In 2010, its text was amended to include the following caveat: “In respect of a State that is not a party to this Statute, the Court shall not exercise its jurisdiction over the crime of aggression when committed by that State’s nationals or on its territory.” Russia can formally utilize this to argue it is immune from ICC prosecution.

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Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor leading the investigation in Ukraine, has been quite forceful in asserting that the ICC is the proper authority to prosecute war crimes and has opposed creating a special tribunal for Ukraine. Since 2014, Kyiv has agreed to accept the ICC’s jurisdiction over war crimes committed on its territory even though Ukraine is not an official member of the court. “We should avoid fragmentation and instead prefer consolidation,” Khan said in December. “I think it’s not beyond the wit of states to look at ways of dealing with gaps that are said to exist,” regarding crimes of aggression. The most glaring gap is that the U.S. refuses to subject its own wars to the international laws it wants applied to its adversaries. When asked specifically about indicting Putin, Khan told the Associated Press, “You ask about an individual who’s the head of state of a government. No prosecutor worth his or her salt should put the cart before the horse. No prosecutor worth his or her salt should start with the target. They should start with the evidence and decide what the evidence shows.”

It seems plausible that many European Union nations and the U.S. will forge ahead with an effort to establish a “special,” ad hoc tribunal focused on prosecuting senior Russian officials for the crime of aggression. The White House has, to date, slow-walked offering formal U.S. support, in part because of concerns over the precedent such actions may create. In January, Biden signed into law legislation that would theoretically allow the U.S. to prosecute Russian officials in American courts for war crimes committed in Ukraine, but it would require that the “offender is present in the United States.”

The war crimes being committed in Ukraine, including the ongoing crime of aggression, should be prosecuted by a world body whose credibility is impeccable and jurisdiction clear.

Senior European officials have suggested they would support a “hybrid” model, which utilizes Ukrainian domestic courts to establish jurisdiction. But lingering over all of this, certainly from Russia’s perspective, will be the question of why the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq — a nation thousands of miles from the U.S. that posed no conceivable threat to its security — was not subjected to such prosecution through an ad hoc tribunal. That argument may not resonate with the leaders of Ukraine or NATO, but it will among many nations across the globe. When the ICC has, in a few limited cases, attempted to probe possible U.S. and British war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the CIA’s post-9/11 black sites, the efforts were shut down under extreme pressure and threats. Former President Donald Trump went so far as to issue an executive order imposing sanctions on ICC prosecutors.

Through its own hypocrisy and the peddling of extreme double standards on issues of international law, the U.S. has forged the path to this jurisdictional mess, which necessitates the creation of a judicial salmagundi. The war crimes being committed in Ukraine, including the ongoing crime of aggression, should be prosecuted by a world body whose credibility is impeccable and jurisdiction clear. It should preside over not just Russia’s crimes, but also those committed by Ukrainian forces and mercenaries, including those from the Wagner Group. The reality is that the militant refusal of the U.S. to subject itself to the laws it wants applied to others has played a significant role in undermining that aim. In the end, this hypocrisy subverts the cause of delivering justice to those who orchestrated the murderous campaign in Ukraine.

The post U.S. Hypocrisy on War Crimes Is a Gift to Putin appeared first on The Intercept.

Attorney General Merrick Garland names an independent special counsel to probe President Joe Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 12, 2023.

Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

We do not yet know if any of the cases involving former presidents and vice presidents improperly retaining classified documents are as incendiary as some partisan commentators would have us believe. The dominant view projected by the liberal media is that Joe Biden and Mike Pence are benign, accidental document hoarders and that Donald Trump is a criminal who absconded with vital national secrets that could destroy the republic as we know it. Pro-Trump outlets have generally run with the narrative that the former president had every right to take the documents because he had magically declassified them in his mind, but Biden took the documents to engage in acts of corruption, including sharing them with his wayward son Hunter. The broader right-wing position is effectively to downplay or ignore Trump’s document situation unless it is convenient for hammering on Biden, and to portray the Biden document case as a breathtaking scandal that portends dark secrets that must be exposed.

We do not have enough information yet to determine if there were malicious motives at play in any of these cases, nor do we know if any actual harm was done. There is no denying, however, that Trump’s situation is different from the Pence and Biden affairs — because of Trump’s scuttling of the investigation (potentially in a criminal manner), his resistance to returning documents, and the sheer volume of documents he took. There may well be a finding that some or all of these officials violated regulations or laws governing the handling of classified or national defense materials. In the end, what will really matter is the precise nature of the documents they improperly retained. In Trump’s case, his actions after he took the documents may prove more problematic for him and his team legally than the act of improperly retaining the materials.

For good reasons, this story is receiving widespread coverage and will be the focus not only of the special counsel probes, but also congressional investigations. The Republicans, wielding their majority in the House, will certainly zero in on the Biden document case. He is, after all, the sitting president, and lawmakers are right to investigate. However, if the House Republicans elect to ignore Trump’s actions or minimize their importance while simultaneously running an aggressive examination of Biden’s conduct, that will severely undermine the credibility of the process. Unfortunately, that seems to be a likely scenario.

“No one’s been investigated more than Donald Trump. Who hasn’t been investigated? Joe Biden, and that’s why we’re finally launching an investigation of Joe Biden,” said Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee. “I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years.” Comer and other Republicans, however, have indicated they intend to question the government on what they allege was a politically motivated raid of Trump’s Florida resort home last August. “My concern is how there’s such a discrepancy in how former President Trump was treated by raiding Mar-a-Lago, by getting the security cameras, by taking pictures of documents on the floor,” he said.

In recent weeks, Comer has fired off a slew of letters demanding information about the documents as well as details about how they were discovered, who had access to them, and the communications between the Justice Department and Biden’s team. He has also asked the White House and the Secret Service for visitor’s logs for Biden’s home in Delaware. “President Biden’s mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security,” Comer wrote in a letter to chief of staff Ron Klain. “Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents.” In another letter to the University of Pennsylvania, Comer also requested a detailed list of everyone, including members of the Biden family, who may have had access to the Penn Biden Center, where the initial batch of documents was discovered.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee, has also announced an investigation into Biden’s documents with an initial focus on Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel and the communications between Biden’s lawyers and the Justice Department about the discoveries of classified materials. “It is unclear when the Department first came to learn about the existence of these documents, and whether it actively concealed this information from the public on the eve of the 2022 elections,” Jordan wrote in a January 13 letter to Garland.

Biden and his lawyers have been emphatic in asserting that they followed proper protocol once they discovered classified papers at the Penn Biden Center. The administration has blasted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for putting “extreme MAGA members,” such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, on oversight committees, charging among other things that they have promoted “dangerous conspiracy theories.”

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Some leading Democrats, including Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, have openly criticized Biden over the documents case, while Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would support bipartisan legislation spearheaded by Michigan Democrat Sen. Gary Peters aimed at preserving presidential and other federal records. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, said he will introduce legislation that would require “federal officials, within 30 days of leaving office, to certify under oath that they possess no classified documents.” Most Democrats, when asked about Biden’s actions, defer to the special counsel probes, while pointing to the differences between the Biden and Trump situations. Many of those same people over the past year have shown no hesitation to blast Trump and portray his taking of classified documents as a nondebatable threat to national security despite the limited amount of concrete information made public about the specific nature of the materials in question. After Connecticut Democrat Rep. Jim Himes remarked that Biden “has apparently done what Trump did in retaining classified documents,” the New York Times reported, “His response irked some Democrats on the Hill, who said they want to maintain a consistent message that the special prosecutors should be able to conduct their investigations without being influenced by politics.”

While the investigations in the House of Representatives appear to be narrowly aimed at Biden’s conduct, there are some indications of bipartisan efforts brewing in the Senate. Sen. Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has expressed frustration that lawmakers never received a briefing on the Trump documents case and has called for one dealing with both the Biden and Trump matters. Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said that there was unanimous support among both Democrats and Republicans on the Intelligence Committee in demanding a full briefing on the documents recovered from both Trump and Biden. “We don’t want to get into a question of threats at this point,” Warner said after a closed-door briefing from the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on January 25. Senators said that Haines told the committee that they would not receive a briefing while the special counsel investigations are ongoing. “We have a job to do. It is our job to make sure that the security of our country is protected and that the intelligence that our country depends upon is not compromised,” Warner said. “The notion that we have to wait until a special prosecutor blesses the Intelligence Committee’s oversight will not stand.” Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has threatened to block Biden’s nominees “for any department or agency and take every step I can on every committee on which I serve, to impose consequences on the administration until they provide these documents for Congress to make our own informed judgment about the risk to national security.”

Jeremy Scahill discusses the mistreatment of whistleblowers and Washington’s culture of secrecy on Democracy Now!, Jan. 24, 2023.

It would be indefensible for the Biden administration to stonewall a bipartisan effort from the Democrat-led Senate Intelligence Committee to conduct a classified investigation of these matters. It is worth remembering that in 1976, then-Sen. Biden was a co-sponsor of the legislation that established the permanent intelligence committees, following the widespread abuses committed during the Nixon administration. Biden was an original member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and criticized various administrations for failing to comply with its oversight mandates.

Even if such briefings on the Biden and Trump documents happen, the public would be kept largely in the dark, save for some inevitable leaks to the media, for the foreseeable future. As the Justice Department investigations unfold, one of the most valuable public responses from Congress would be to convene a thorough, independent, bipartisan investigation of the entire bureaucracy of secrecy that exists throughout the federal government. It should interrogate the pervasive practice of overclassification, the uneven legal treatment — depending on their status or positions of power — of individuals who mishandle classified materials, as well as the abuse of the Espionage Act by both Democratic and Republican administrations to target whistleblowers and journalistic sources.

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There is another aspect to these scandals that we should not lose sight of: the general climate of impunity that exists among the powerful when it comes to secrecy and abuse of power. Under President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the U.S. was operating a global kidnap and torture regime after 9/11. Senior CIA personnel destroyed videotapes of their torture of detainees. The CIA, under John Brennan, spied on U.S. Senate investigators and hacked into their computer systems. In the lead up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, Cheney and other officials abused the system of classified intelligence, cherry-picking unverified data to fabricate a justification for war. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under Barack Obama, perjured himself in front of the U.S. Senate when he lied about the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of the communications of Americans. Modern U.S. history is rife with such malignant actions on the part of senior officials. No one has ever faced any real consequences for these abuses of power — and in fact, many people involved, such as Gina Haspel, who served as CIA director under Trump, continued to be promoted in government or received lucrative deals in the private sector.

It is a disservice to the public to exploit the Trump, Biden, and Pence cases for solely partisan purposes. Each case should be investigated on its merits and the public informed of the extent of the misconduct. At the same time, this moment should serve as an opportunity to launch a serious and wide-ranging investigation into the broader culture of secrecy in Washington, D.C., that leads to such cases.

But the investigation shouldn’t stop there. Any meaningful inquiry must include an accounting of a wider range of abuses, including the secret torture program, and must develop a system of meaningful consequences for the perpetrators regardless of their prominence or the powerful positions they hold.

The post Classified Documents Scandals Point to Larger Culture of Impunity appeared first on The Intercept.

President Joe Biden departs Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, in Atlanta, Ga., on Jan. 15, 2023.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

To be sure, this is not simply a case of both sides do it and therefore the government response and legal outcomes should be identical. There are significant differences between the two cases that warrant great attention. But obfuscated by the political battles and competing narratives from the partisan commentariat are a series of important issues about the U.S. system of rampant overclassification, the treatment of whistleblowers, and the uneven application of laws surrounding the mishandling of classified documents depending on the stature of the violator.

“I don’t want to draw any equivalence between Biden’s actions and Trump’s, and I don’t want to provide excuses for either president’s conduct, but both of these episodes are in part the result of a totally broken classification system,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “Far too much information is classified, and many of the things that are classified are classified for the wrong reasons — not because their disclosure would harm national security, but because their disclosure would be embarrassing or inconvenient or simply because it’s easier for bureaucrats to classify them than not to.”

Trump was famously impeached twice during his presidency, though he was acquitted by the Senate in both cases. Democrats are hoping the former president encounters a different fate at the end of the current investigations into his conduct in the waning days of his administration and his retention of classified documents as a private citizen. As sitting president, Biden will have to contend not just with the special counsel probe, but also congressional investigations run by Republicans who have made no secret of their desire to bring him down. Given the stakes not just for Biden individually but also for his presidency, it is important to review the chronology of events as we currently understand them.

Mishandled and Miscommunicated

On November 2, 2022, a week before the high-stakes midterm elections, lawyers for Biden discovered some forbidden fruit inside a seldom-used office in a think tank bearing the name of the 46th president. The lawyers were there to close down the office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which Biden inaugurated in 2018 following his eight years as vice president. According to Biden’s legal team, as they packed up Biden’s papers and other items, the lawyers found a batch of what appeared to be classified materials inside a locked closet in Biden’s office suite.

Biden’s team, according to their own account, swiftly reported the matter to the National Archives and offered full cooperation in determining how the documents arrived at the unsecured facility. The president, they claimed, was unaware of the documents and had no knowledge of how they came to be there. “I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office, but I don’t know what’s in the documents either,” Biden later said. On November 9, a day after the congressional elections, the Justice Department and FBI began an initial assessment of the matter, and, on November 14, Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned a U.S. attorney to initiate a preliminary investigation.

Biden’s team kept this all a secret, and we may never know for how long they intended to do that.

Perhaps in a different era, this matter would not have given off the vibe of a five-alarm fire. But the timing of this discovery, both in the immediate political sense and the broader historical sense, could not have been worse for Biden. But then, it did get worse.

The president’s team did not inform the public about the classified documents once they were discovered. They did not inform the public that the FBI and Justice Department had launched an investigation into the sitting president on a potentially serious matter involving classified materials that had been taken to an unsecured facility and remained there for years. The president and his advisers knew very well the political tripwire they had crossed and the implications it could have had not just on the midterm elections, but also on the case against his predecessor for the very same issue. So Biden’s team kept this all a secret, and we may never know for how long they intended to do that. “The White House was hoping for a speedy inquiry that would find no intentional mishandling of the documents, planning to disclose the matter only after Justice issued its all-clear,” according to the Washington Post.

There are vast differences between the Biden and Trump cases, both in the volume of materials and the manner in which the two sides have handled their situations and approached the investigations. Biden’s team claims he was not aware the handful of documents were in his custody and immediately reported them to the National Archives, while Trump has said he had the right to take the materials — numbering more than 300 classified documents — to Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s staff, at the end of his presidency, had ferried hundreds of classified materials from Washington, D.C., to Trump’s Palm Beach resort. It is not uncommon for presidents to violate the Presidential Records Act, but it is unusual to have a president tenaciously resist efforts by the National Archives to take custody of improperly handled materials, especially at the scale involved in the Trump case.

From the beginning, Trump’s team consistently stymied the efforts of the government to take custody of the documents. In early 2022, Trump grudgingly handed over some materials to the National Archives, but he and his aides fiercely resisted returning additional documents, including through conduct that may constitute obstruction of justice. Among the documents initially recovered from Trump were reportedly materials from the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, and other agencies. In August, the FBI executed a search warrant and seized dozens of boxes of additional materials from Trump’s Florida estate. In an affidavit in support of the warrant, the FBI asserted that it believed it would find “evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation” of several laws, including rules governing the gathering or transmission of defense information under the Espionage Act. Allegedly included in the cache discovered during the raid at Mar-a-Lago were documents labeled “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.”

An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 15, 2022.

Photo: Marco Bello/Reuters

These factors, as well as the specific nature and sensitivity of the documents in question, could prove significant in determining the divergent ways these two cases might play out legally. In a public relations sense, however, particularly at this extremely bad-faith moment in history, such distinctions matter little, especially to Trump and the Republicans.

In the months leading up to the discovery of classified materials in Biden’s possession, the Democrats hammered away at Trump over the classified documents. The former president and his supporters have claimed he is being targeted in yet another political witch hunt and that as president, he had the power to declassify the documents he took. While it is technically true that both the president and vice president have such authority, there are procedures for declassifying documents, and it appears likely that Trump did not abide by them. Instead, he claimed that as president, he had issued a standing order that anything he took to his private residence was by default declassified and he therefore had the right to take them to Florida when he left office. “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying ‘it’s declassified’ — even by thinking about it,” Trump told Fox News after the FBI action at Mar-a-Lago.

In September, in an interview with “60 Minutes,” Biden lambasted Trump for taking the documents. “How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible?” he said, recalling his reaction when he saw the FBI photos of the documents laid out on the floor. “I thought, ‘What data was in there that may compromise sources and methods?’” Just a few months later, those very questions could be asked of Biden.

Joe’s Garage

As the White House kept the lid on its own brewing crisis, Garland announced on November 18 that he had appointed former war crimes prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate Trump’s retention of classified materials, as well as his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and his role in the January 6 siege at the U.S. Capitol. Following Smith’s appointment, liberal media outlets and Democratic politicians spent endless hours discussing what they hoped would be the criminal prosecution of Trump, ideally ending with jail time. Unbeknownst to them, Biden and his administration were sitting on a ticking bomb of their own.

On December 20, Biden’s lawyers discovered more classified materials, this time at the Biden home in Delaware. The documents were not even in a locked closet in an office. They were in Biden’s garage next to his prized Corvette.

On January 9, CBS News broke the story. Well, part of the story. CBS reported that the Justice Department had launched an initial probe into the documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center. The White House counsel’s office was forced to confirm the report. “Since that discovery, the president’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the archives,” said Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president. He said nothing about the documents discovered in Biden’s garage. Biden, along with Garland, was in Mexico City for a summit of North American leaders when the story broke.

The documents were not even in a locked closet in an office. They were in Biden’s garage next to his prized Corvette.

On January 10, Biden personally spoke about the documents, but like his lawyer, he pretended that the only issue was documents found at the Penn Biden Center. “People know I take classified documents, classified information, seriously,” Biden said in Mexico. “When my lawyers were clearing out my office at the University of Pennsylvania, they set up an office for me — when I — the four years after being vice president, I was a professor at Penn. They found some documents in a box, in a locked cabinet, at least a closet. And as soon as they did, they realized there were several classified documents in that box.”

In Mexico, Biden pleaded ignorance about the contents of the classified materials. “I don’t know what’s in the documents, I’ve — my lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were,” he said. “I’ve turned over the boxes, they’ve turned over the boxes to the archives, and we’re cooperating fully. We’re cooperating fully with the review, which I hope will be finished soon.”

The next day, on January 11, NBC News reported that more documents had been recovered from a second unnamed location. On January 12, Garland named Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney in Maryland, who was appointed by Trump, as special prosecutor to investigate the Biden case. Only then did Biden’s legal team finally confirm that documents were recovered from his personal garage in late December. When a Fox News reporter asked Biden why he would keep classified documents in a garage next to his Corvette, the president shot back, “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.”

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Trump and other Republicans have seized on the garage documents, in particular, in their attacks on Biden, raising questions about who had access to them and trying to link them to various scandals involving Biden’s son Hunter. “The White House just announced that there are no LOGS or information of any kind on visitors to the Wilmington house and flimsy, unlocked, and unsecured, but now very famous, garage,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. “This is one of seemingly many places where HIGHLY CLASSIFIED documents are stored (in a big pile on the damp floor). Mar-a-Lago is a highly secured facility, with Security Cameras all over the place, and watched over by staff & our great Secret Service. I have INFO on everyone.” Trump does not seem to be doing himself any favors by posting about the case on social media, and some analysts believe he may be incriminating himself in some of his rants.

While the FBI has been aggressive in its pursuit of documents from Trump, culminating in the search warrant-empowered raid at his resort, the agency has taken a different approach with Biden. The president’s legal team and the Justice Department agreed that the FBI would not oversee the search for more classified materials potentially held by the president at his homes and would place the responsibility of self-reporting on Biden’s lawyers, according to the Wall Street Journal. The arrangement was, in part, a result of the initial cooperation offered by Biden’s team, the paper stated, but also offers investigators flexibility as the probe deepens. “That way the Justice Department would preserve the ability to take a tougher line, including executing a future search warrant, if negotiations ever turned hostile, current and former law enforcement officials said,” reported the Wall Street Journal. The right-wing media ecosystem has cited this report to bolster the argument that Biden is being treated differently than Trump.

At present, the White House claims the total number of documents found at Biden-affiliated locations numbers roughly 20. There is very little publicly known about the contents of the documents recovered from various Biden sites. CNN has reported that among the classified materials housed at the Penn Biden Center were documents “including U.S. intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom.” Some were reportedly marked “Top Secret.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who ran the Penn Biden Center, has said he had no knowledge of the documents and did not know they were there.

The Biden administration has offered a lackluster and unsatisfying defense of its delays in disclosing the discoveries, the deliberate initial omission of the existence of the garage documents, and the misleading statements offered by the president and his aides. Biden’s legal team has “attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity,” said Robert Bauer, the president’s personal attorney. “These considerations require avoiding the public release of detail relevant to the investigation while it is ongoing.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has repeatedly struggled to provide direct answers to legitimate questions from the press about a range of issues pertaining to the documents and the timeline offered by Biden and his team. She told journalists on January 12 — the day Garland announced a special prosecutor — that the search for the documents at Biden’s properties was finished. “You should assume that it’s been completed, yes,” she said. “But that search was completed last night. And now this is in the hands of the Justice Department.” But that very night, five more classified documents were discovered at Biden’s Delaware residence in a room adjacent to his garage. “Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday evening to facilitate providing the document the president’s personal counsel found on Wednesday to the Justice Department,” said Sauber, Biden’s special counsel. “While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages. The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.”

Jean-Pierre did not mention the new documents in her briefing the next day, despite repeated questions from reporters. On Saturday, January 14, the administration confirmed the existence of the newly discovered documents. The following Monday, Jean-Pierre offered a muddled defense of her earlier comments and refused to answer when she had learned about the discovery of the new documents. “I have been forthcoming from this podium,” she said. “What I said yes to was what the statement at the time that we all had. Right? You all had the statement. And I was repeating what the — what the counsel was sharing at that time.”

At a minimum, Biden and his administration have committed repeated sins of omission in how they’ve explained this situation to the public. While it is plausible that Biden is being honest when he says he had no knowledge of the documents being at his think tank office, the administration knowingly left out crucial details, including the garage documents, and only came clean when journalists exposed new information or were on the verge of doing so. “I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets,” Biden said of the decision not to disclose the discovery of the documents prior to the midterm elections. “I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no ‘there’ there.”

Trump’s defense of his actions, on the other hand, seems to boil down to: 1. I did it; 2. I had a right to do it; and 3. Anything I did to stop you from violating points one and two was justified.

News camera operators stand outside the Penn Biden Center on Jan. 10, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Problem With Overclassification

The classified documents scandals involving both Trump and Biden will unfold on various planes, including political and legal. House Republicans, reveling in their new majority, have already vowed to make Biden’s case a major focus of what is expected to be a sprawling, chaotic symphony of investigations backed by the power of subpoenas. The Democrats control the Justice Department, and special prosecutor Jack Smith — who is investigating Trump’s classified documents case — is known as a tenacious legal combatant who used to run the Justice Department’s public corruption division.

Ben Wizner, the director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that factors such as the Biden team’s cooperation and self-reporting of the documents and Trump’s hindering of the investigations will be relevant as the respective cases proceed. But Wizner cautioned against placing too much emphasis on the simple fact that the materials were classified. “The entire classification regime is a joke,” he said. “My hope is that liberals do not adopt the line that the classified documents in Biden’s garage, even though we don’t know what they are, are harmless, and the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, even though we don’t know what they are, are a grave threat to the nation. The overwhelming likelihood is that neither breach is likely to harm much of anything.” He added: “Remember that Trump was president and if he wanted to harm the U.S. and give information to adversaries, he could have done that every day for four years.”

Both Biden and Trump may have technically violated the law or, at a minimum, the regulations governing the handling of classified information and presidential records. Trump has been accused, though not legally to date, of attempting to destroy records, and he was infamous for ripping up papers as president, a factor which may prove significant in his case. Based on information revealed about the investigation into Trump, it seems possible he could also be charged with obstruction or even conspiracy. There has been no credible suggestion Biden has engaged in any such conduct. Hovering over all of this, of course, will be the political and historical implications of a criminal indictment against a former president, which should not matter but almost certainly will be part of the deliberations once all the facts are known. If one of these powerful men retained the documents for malicious purposes, including to aid a foreign power, personally profit, or engage in blackmail, it would be ludicrous to argue such actions should be tolerated. The same is true if they illicitly took documents that could truly harm the security of the nation or jeopardize sensitive sources or methods. But if the documents are not actually sensitive and their public disclosure would cause no harm, then the question must be asked: Should they remain classified in the first place?

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was recently asked by CNN’s Chris Wallace about the seriousness of Biden holding classified documents for six years after leaving office. “We’ll see what they are,” Pelosi said. “I don’t think that having a briefing on a meeting with somebody—you know, we used to tease up in the Intelligence Committee and just say, ‘Be careful because they’re going to stamp “classified” on the Washington Post.’”

Obama alluded to this issue during the scandal involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of nongovernment email and private servers to house sensitive government materials. “What I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there are — there’s classified, and then there’s classified,” Obama told Fox News in April 2016. “There’s stuff that is really top-secret top-secret, and there’s stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state, that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open source.”

Washington, D.C., has been drunk on excessive secrecy for decades, so taking a nuanced approach to this problem is virtually impossible. Jaffer cited an observation made by Justice Potter Stewart in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971: “When everything is classified, then nothing is classified.” Jaffer added, “Given the number of classified secrets, and the number of people who have access to those secrets, it’s just practically impossible for the national security bureaucracy to keep track of them.”

“The way that breaches of classification works is too often: Strict liability for thee, impunity for me.”

In the case of whistleblowers charged under the Espionage Act, the accused are not even permitted to explain their motive for leaking or publishing classified materials that expose government abuses or crimes. These cases are relegated to a technical yes-or-no question about mishandling classified intelligence. And the criminal sentences have been extreme. In 2018, Reality Winner, who tried to blow the whistle about Russian attempts to penetrate software used in some U.S. voting systems, was sentenced to more than five years in prison after pleading guilty to one felony count of unauthorized transmission of national defense information. Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale was given a 45-month sentence in 2021 after pleading guilty to the same charge as Winner. Both were prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

There have also been recent cases in which government employees have been prosecuted for taking classified documents for more mundane purposes. In early 2020, Asia Janay Lavarello, a civilian Defense Department employee on temporary assignment at the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines, was working on a classified thesis in a secure facility in the embassy when Covid-19 restrictions limited her access. In March, she took home three other classified theses, which she said she wanted to use as models for her own project, as well as notes she made during classified meetings in the embassy. In a plea agreement, Lavarello also admitted to emailing notes to her personal email and to making false statements to FBI agents. She went to prison for three months. Lavarello’s lawyer said she regretted her actions and did not intend to harm the U.S. “Government employees authorized to access classified information should face imprisonment if they misuse that authority in violation of criminal law as Ms. Lavarello did in this case,” said U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors. “Such breaches of national security are serious violations of criminal law, and we will pursue them.”

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Lavarello’s case stands in stark contrast to those of Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser Sandy Berger and former CIA Director David Petraeus. Berger stole documents from the National Archives in 2003 by stuffing them inside his clothing and then destroyed some classified materials. He claimed he wanted to review the documents to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Petraeus was forced to resign as CIA director in 2012 after it was revealed he had improperly handled classified materials, including taking some to his home and sharing them with his biographer with whom he was having an affair. Berger was fined $50,000 by a federal judge and lost his security clearance, and Petraeus got two years probation and a $100,000 fine. “The way that breaches of classification works is too often: Strict liability for thee, impunity for me,” said the ACLU’s Wizner. “‘Thee’ being anybody who works lower down in the system, and ‘me’ being anyone who has any power.”

In a recent paper for the Knight First Amendment Institute, Jaffer argued that the sprawling classification infrastructure within the U.S. government has operated counter to democratic ideals. “In the years since 9/11, the United States has paid a staggering price for excessive secrecy. Time and again, national security policies crafted behind closed doors and shielded from public scrutiny have proved to be deeply flawed, with far-reaching consequences for life, liberty, and security,” he wrote. “The executive overclassifies for many different reasons — among them, that officials are rarely sanctioned for overclassifying information; that classifying information can afford the classifier bureaucratic advantage; and that classifying information can shield controversial decisions from scrutiny both inside and outside the government.”

Wizner, who has served as the principal legal adviser to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden since 2013, said that this moment offers an opportunity to challenge the system of overclassification and unnecessary secrecy that has become a centerpiece of U.S. governance. “The problem with almost everything being classified is that it gives the government almost unlimited power and discretion to go after anyone who is a powerless violator and to give a free pass to the powerful,” he asserted. “Snowden’s revelations led to meaningful reforms in Congress, the courts, and the executive branch. Even former Attorney General Eric Holder has acknowledged that Snowden performed a public service.”

Both Biden and Trump have advocated harsh criminal penalties for leakers and whistleblowers. In Biden’s case, he spent decades as a U.S. senator trying to strengthen laws governing improper disclosures of classified information. As vice president under Obama, he was part of an administration that prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all administrations in history combined. As president, he has continued this trend, including through prosecuting Hale, refusing to pardon Winner, and continuing the Trump-era effort to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. As president, Trump waged an open war against journalists and their sources, and his Justice Department went so far as to dig up leak cases Obama had declined to pursue and then threw the book at journalistic sources. Under Obama, Trump, and Biden, harsh sentences were imposed on whistleblowers.

None of this appears to be relevant to much of the media coverage or political pontification these days, but it should be. “If history is any guide here, neither of these presidents will be seriously sanctioned for their mishandling of government secrets,” says Jaffer, a veteran civil liberties litigator who waged battles over excessive secrecy throughout the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies. “As a general rule, whistleblowers who disclose secrets in order to inform the public of government wrongdoing are prosecuted aggressively and sanctioned harshly. But senior officials who disclose secrets recklessly, or in order to manipulate public opinion about government policy, tend to be treated with kid gloves.”

The post The Secrets Presidents Keep in Their Garages and Luxury Resorts appeared first on The Intercept.

Former President Donald Trump and his supporters have defended his transfer of classified materials to his resort at Mar-a-Lago, claiming that the president had authority to declassify the materials. That case is also the subject of a federal investigation.

It is a barely concealed secret in Washington, D.C., that for decades, elite politicians have engaged in some form of bending or breaking the rules on classified documents — in some cases for plausibly benign uses as writing memoirs. Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser Sandy Berger stole documents from the National Archives in 2003 by stuffing them inside his clothing and then destroyed some classified materials. He claimed he wanted to review the documents to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Gen. David Petraeus was forced to resign as CIA director in 2012 after it was revealed he had improperly handled classified materials, including taking some to his home and sharing them with his biographer with whom he was having an affair.

While there have been cases where criminal charges have been brought — Berger was fined $50,000 by a federal judge and lost his security clearance, and Petraeus got two years probation and a $100,000 fine — it is rare for a high-profile figure to face any meaningful criminal consequences for such actions. That, of course, is not the case with whistleblowers — including Reality Winner, Jeffrey Sterling, Terry Albury, and Daniel Hale — who have been aggressively prosecuted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

The revelation that Biden illicitly stored classified materials, including in his garage, is a grave embarrassment to the president, particularly in light of the fact that Democrats have hammered away at Trump for months over the classified documents he retained at Mar-a-Lago. But there is also a relevant story from Biden’s past that bears mentioning.

The events took place during the administration of Jimmy Carter, when Biden was a rising star in the U.S. Senate and an inaugural member of the Intelligence Committee, which was established in response to the lawlessness of the Nixon administration. Biden colluded with Republicans on the Intelligence Committee to kill the nomination of a CIA critic to be director of the agency. Among the reasons was that the nominee, Ted Sorensen, had admitted to taking classified documents for a biography of his longtime friend John F. Kennedy and had spoken out in defense of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. In fact, Biden went so far as to suggest Sorensen might be subject to prosecution under the Espionage Act.

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As The Intercept reported in its special series “Empire Politician: A Half-Century of Joe Biden’s Stances on War, Militarism, and the CIA,” Sen. Biden campaigned aggressively for President Carter, but he later made clear that he was never a big fan of the famously liberal president. When Carter nominated Sorensen as CIA director, the national security establishment in Washington was apoplectic. Sorensen had no foreign policy experience and was out of place in the world of covert ops. Carter had said that he wanted an outsider for the CIA post as part of his pledge to reduce the agency’s power and budget.

Sorensen’s nomination came after a campaign in which Carter promised to wage war against the agency’s “excessive secrecy” and to expose and punish CIA officers who broke the law. “We must never again keep secret the evolution of our foreign policy from the Congress and the American people,” Carter declared. “They should never again be misled.” Carter ultimately failed to achieve many of his promises regarding the CIA, but the mere fact that he made such statements caused grave concern within the agency and among many Republican lawmakers. This conflict broke out into the open during Sorensen’s confirmation process.

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Biden assured Sorensen that he would help guide him through the process. As Sorensen recalled, Biden had led him to believe that he had the senator’s “enthusiastic” support, telling him that he was “the best appointment Carter has made.”

When Sorensen came under attack from Republicans, though, Biden shifted his position and went out of his way to dig up an episode from Sorenson’s past that would serve as a red flag against his confirmation. Sorensen had given an affidavit in Ellsberg’s case, in which Sorensen acknowledged that many officials in Washington, including himself, would take classified documents home to review and that officials often leaked far more sensitive documents to the press without facing prosecutions.

Biden said he learned of the affidavit, which was never filed in court, from a Republican colleague and assessed that the Republicans on the committee would seek to use it to discredit Sorensen. Biden had his staff scour documents and Sorensen’s books to find the unfiled affidavit, and an aide who was involved with the Pentagon Papers case eventually located it. This, combined with other concerns, including allegations that Sorensen was a pacifist who dodged the Korean War draft, put the nomination in peril. “It was like being blindsided by a truck,” Sorensen said, describing the campaign against him as an effort where “many little dirty streams flowed together to make one large one.”

In a phone call with Carter after confirming the document, Biden said, “I think we’re in trouble. I think it is going to be tough.” As it became clear that the nomination was doomed, Carter offered an uninspired defense of Sorensen’s comments on classified documents with a public statement, “saying it would be ‘most unfortunate’ if frank acknowledgement of common practice should ‘deprive the administration and the country of his talents and services,’” according to a press report.

At Sorensen’s confirmation hearing, Biden laid into the nominee. “Quite honestly, I’m not sure whether or not Mr. Sorensen could be indicted or convicted under the espionage statutes,” Biden said, questioning “whether Mr. Sorensen intentionally took advantage of the ambiguities in the law or carelessly ignored the law.” Biden biographer Jules Witcover later wrote: “As a result of these and other complaints against Sorensen, and behind-the-scenes pressure from Carter, the old JFK speechwriter agreed to have his nomination withdrawn.” Sorensen later said Biden should be awarded the “prize for political hypocrisy in a town noted for political hypocrisy.”

The post Biden Used Classified Documents Accusation Against Carter CIA Nominee appeared first on The Intercept.

President Joe Biden being welcomed by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 15, 2022.

Photo: Royal Court of Saudi Arabia/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

It’s hard to imagine what more Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman could do that would actually spur the Biden administration to use the full force of the presidency to oppose his murderous reign in Saudi Arabia. Ordering the execution and literal butchering of a Washington Post journalist certainly didn’t do it. Conducting mass executions of its own citizens? Old news. Waging a merciless scorched-earth campaign against the civilian population of a poor neighboring country? The U.S. continues to support that one. Let’s have another fist bump, old pal.

Two years into Biden’s presidency, it is crystal clear that the Saudis have nothing significant to fear from the U.S. government. From a historical perspective, that is not in the least shocking. For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have propped up the Saudi monarchy, lathering it with weapons sales and intelligence sharing, all while normalizing the draconian, antidemocratic grip on power held by the monarchy.

When Donald Trump was president, a lot of Democrats were given political cover to finally come around to opposing the Saudi-led campaign of annihilation in Yemen. Trump was so cartoonishly cozy with MBS and the royals as their air war intensified and arms sales escalated that it became an almost irrelevant footnote that it was the Obama-Biden administration that gave the initial green light to the Saudi-led war in the first place. Or the fact that Barack Obama began bombing Yemen in December 2009 and continued to hit the country with drone strikes and cruise missile attacks throughout most of his presidency. In fact, by the time Obama left office, his administration had offered the Saudis more military support, $115 billion, than any in the history of the seven-decade U.S.-Saudi alliance.

By 2019, particularly in the aftermath of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s October 2018 murder, Yemen had become a Trump-made humanitarian disaster. That framing — which was bolstered by Trump’s garish public support for MBS after the murder — meant it was OK for more Democrats to oppose continued U.S. support for the Saudi’s brutal military campaign. A bipartisan war powers resolution aimed at doing that passed in 2019. Trump ultimately vetoed it, but it was nonetheless an achievement. Biden’s current national security adviser Jake Sullivan — along with Samantha Power, Colin Kahl, Susan Rice, and Wendy Sherman — signed a letter calling on Congress to override Trump’s veto.

Enter the 2020 election.

On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to continue the momentum and end U.S. bodyguarding of Saudi Arabia’s crimes, particularly after the execution of Khashoggi, a permanent U.S. resident, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. If elected president, Biden said in a November 2019 Democratic primary debate, “I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them. We were going to in fact make them pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.” Biden asserted that there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.” As for the war in Yemen, Biden promised to “end the sale of material to the Saudis where they’re going in and murdering children.”

Well, that was then and this is now. Politicians say stuff when they are running for office that they don’t really mean. In fact, sometimes they mean just the opposite.

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On Tuesday, the Biden White House went into legislative guerrilla battle mode to undermine support for the updated version of the war powers resolution that Trump vetoed. The resolution, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would have prohibited U.S. support for offensive Saudi operations in Yemen. Biden administration officials aggressively lobbied lawmakers to oppose the measure, and told them Biden “strongly opposed” it and that they would recommend he veto it should it pass. Sanders ultimately pulled the resolution, saying: “[T]he Biden administration agreed to continue working with my office on ending the war in Yemen. Let me be clear. If we do not reach agreement, I will, along with my colleagues, bring this resolution back for a vote in the near future and do everything possible to end this horrific conflict.” Make sure to check out the excellent reporting on this by Ryan Grim and Ken Klippenstein.

Now, you might be forgiven for believing that there would be actual consequences for MBS and Saudi Arabia given Biden’s pledges as a candidate for president, particularly that business about making them a pariah. In fact, Biden made the same promise about another world leader in February when he launched a murderous war against a neighbor. “Putin’s aggression against Ukraine will end up costing Russia dearly, economically and strategically,” he said the day Russian forces began the attack on Ukraine. “We will make sure that Putin will be a pariah on the international stage.”

It is, at times, tempting to imagine what would happen if Biden were to use even a modest fraction of the weight of American power in confronting Saudi Arabia that it has brought to bear on Russia. But doing so would be an exercise in fantasy. As president, Biden has greenlighted a series of U.S. weapons purchases by the Saudis, including $3 billion worth of Patriot missiles in August. These weapons deals, in the words of the administration, “will support U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political stability and economic growth in the Middle East.”

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Sanders says he is not giving up on the Yemen resolution and that the White House has indicated it will “work with us on crafting language that would be mutually acceptable.” Even if some form of a compromise is reached that allows a version of the resolution to pass, it will be a far cry from bringing any meaningful accountability for the crimes of the Saudi regime. And it will not result in any action vaguely resembling the promises Biden made as a candidate for president. The resolution is narrowly focused on ending U.S. support for explicitly “offensive” Saudi operations in Yemen.

Former Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a longtime opponent of U.S. policy on Saudi Arabia who left the Republican Party and became an independent, criticized Sanders for withdrawing the resolution. “Totally unacceptable. You know this is the game administrations and congressional leaders have been playing for years,” Amash tweeted. “They won’t respond to your gesture with anything but further delay and obfuscation. Biden wants it held until Rs control the House so they can block it for him.”

In its talking points opposing the Sanders measure, obtained by The Intercept, the White House argues that its own strategy was already succeeding in deescalating the Yemen war: “The situation is still fragile, and our diplomatic efforts are ongoing. … A vote on this resolution risks undermining those efforts.”

Some administration allies also argued that the language of Sanders’s resolution defining the term “hostilities” could set a precedent that potentially undermines the legal framework for U.S. military support to Ukraine. According to the definition in the resolution, the U.S. would be prohibited from “sharing intelligence for the purpose of enabling offensive coalition strikes” and “providing logistical support” for such strikes “by providing maintenance or transferring spare parts to coalition members flying warplanes engaged in anti-Houthi bombings in Yemen.” It also stated that neither military nor civilian personnel from the Defense Department would be permitted “to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of the Saudi-led coalition forces in hostilities against the Houthis in Yemen or in situations in which there exists an imminent threat that such coalition forces become engaged in such hostilities.”

In his December 8 “War Powers Report” to Congress, Biden asserted that ongoing U.S. military support for the “Saudi-led Coalition” does not “involve United States Armed Forces in hostilities with the Houthis for the purposes of the War Powers Resolution.”

What was notably absent from the White House talking points was any mention of Iran. Throughout both the Trump and Biden administrations, support for Saudi Arabia has been viewed in part through the lens of the U.S. effort to prepare for the possibility of future overt conflict, or even war, with Iran. In his War Powers Report last week, Biden stated that there are currently 2,755 U.S. military personnel deployed in Saudi Arabia “to protect United States forces and interests in the region against hostile action by Iran and Iran-backed groups.” In coordination with the Saudis, these forces “provide air and missile defense capabilities and support the operation of United States military aircraft.”

With Tehran and Moscow developing closer ties in the midst of the Ukraine war, and Iran shipping drones and other munitions to Russia, the Biden administration may well be concerned about legally soldering any explicit limitations to its support for Riyadh. The U.S. also continues to wrestle with how to respond to Saudi maneuvers around global oil supply and pricing.

The White House campaign this week to stop the Yemen resolution is taking place against the backdrop of the Biden administration intervening in a lawsuit against MBS for Khashoggi’s murder. On December 6, despite “the credible allegations of his involvement in Khashoggi’s murder,” a federal judge threw out the case because “the United States has informed the court that he is immune.” That move drew harsh words, even from some of Biden’s most passionate supporters in the Senate. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, charged that the Biden administration “has chosen to take the side of the party that our own intelligence agencies have concluded is responsible for the murder.” Kaine called it a “deliberate and callous decision” by the administration that “sends a horrific message to despots around the world.”

The next time Joe Biden promises to make an international leader a pariah, he should clarify which of his interpretations of the word he means: the universally accepted definition or the one he has applied to MBS and Saudi Arabia, which has proven to mean the exact opposite.

The post Joe Biden Can’t Quit the Saudi “Pariahs” appeared first on The Intercept.

The B-21 Raider is unveiled during a ceremony at Northrop Grumman’s Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif., on Dec. 2, 2022. The high-tech stealth bomber can carry nuclear and conventional weapons; it’s designed to be able to fly without a crew on board and is on track to cost nearly $700 million per plane.

Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Congress will soon vote on a record-shattering $857 billion defense spending bill that authorizes $45 billion more than Biden requested. Included in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, finalized on December 6, is the establishment of a multiyear no-bid contract system through which Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and other weapons manufacturers are being empowered to expand their “industrial base” and business. Lawmakers determined that “providing multi-year procurement authority for certain munitions programs is essential,” in part because it will “provide the defense industrial base with predictable production opportunities and firm contractual commitments” to “increase and expand defense industrial capacity.”

The NDAA authorizes $800 million in new military aid to Ukraine, which is separate from the supplemental funding measures the U.S. has implemented since Russia’s invasion. The unprecedented flow of weapons to Ukraine has included a substantial transfer of weapons from the U.S. stockpile, amounting to approximately $10 billion worth of weapons. U.S. lawmakers have used this fact to push for expanding the scope of not only weapons procurements to “replenish” the arsenal, but also to maintain the pipeline of weapons to Ukraine and European-allied nations through at least the end of 2024. The defense industry position is that such multiyear acquisitions are preferable to emergency surge-demand scenarios, in part because such contracts allow for a long-term expansion of production facilities and increased workforce. It appears that Congress is heading in that direction.

On November 30, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. Army had awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Raytheon to produce six National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems “in support of the efforts in Ukraine.” The estimated completion date was listed as November 2025. The next day, the Defense Department announced a $431 million contract for Lockheed to produce M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers to replenish those transferred to Kyiv. In November, Lockheed also received a $521 million contract to resupply the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems given to Ukraine.

The lion’s share of major defense contracts goes to a handful of companies: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. The Pentagon routinely engages in no-bid contracts or awards contracts that are, by default, single-bid contracts. What lawmakers are seeking to do with the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, however, is to extend that practice to the refilling of weapons stockpiles. The legislation would empower the Pentagon to engage in no-bid contracts to replenish arms supplies if the weapons were transferred “in response to an armed attack by a foreign adversary of the United States.” While the legislation specifically refers to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it could also apply to officially designated adversaries such as China, Iran, Cuba, or North Korea. The NDAA authorizes more than $2.7 billion in new funds to “boost munitions production capacity.” Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante recently said the Pentagon has already put into contract $4 billion worth of deals “to replenish our inventories of equipment we have sent to Ukraine.”

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The war industry is clearly elated. “We spend a lot of money on some very exquisite large systems and we do not spend as much on the munitions necessary to support those,” said Raytheon’s CEO Gregory Hayes at the recent Reagan National Defense Forum. “We have not had a priority on fulfilling the war reserves that we need to fight a long-term battle.” Politico reported that discussions at the forum, which featured defense company CEOs, members of Congress, and U.S. military officials, identified China as the greatest “long-term threat.” But the China focus “was eclipsed by the need to kick into much higher gear to tackle a problem that many here didn’t imagine just a year ago: a hot proxy war with Russia in Ukraine that has sent the Pentagon and the defense industry scrambling.” Noting recent moves by Congress to increase munitions production, the U.S. Army’s top weapons buyer, Doug Bush, said, “I think we’re closer to a wartime mode, which has been something I’ve been working on to build.”

In pushing their case for expanding the weapons acquisitions process, some lawmakers are striking somber notes about the danger of depleting the U.S. arsenal. “Our nation’s ability to defend itself should never suffer because of bureaucratic policies and red tape,” declared Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. “As the United States continues to lead the global military aid response to Ukraine amid Putin’s unprovoked war, it has become increasingly critical that we simultaneously ensure the sustainment of our defensive weapons stockpile while also providing the materials our allies and partners need to defend themselves,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who spearheaded the no-bid procurement legislation. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., asserted that the “lethal aid provided to Ukraine has diminished U.S. stockpiles and left defense contractors with uncertainty on timing and orders for backfill, negatively affecting their ability to quickly ramp up production.” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the legislation would ensure that “helping our allies and partners doesn’t diminish our ability to protect ourselves.”

There is no actual shortage of defensive weapons in the U.S.

This rhetoric is largely a parlor game. There is no actual shortage of defensive weapons in the U.S. The “stockpile” is based on U.S. war-gaming theory and preparation for various imagined future wars and simultaneous campaigns. Ultimately, this NDAA would represent the latest narrative triumph for the hawks who falsely complained that Bill Clinton and the Democrats had gravely endangered America by “gutting” defense spending in the 1990s. Declaring war against the threats posed by nation states like Russia and China is a far better vehicle to sell large-scale defense spending than Osama bin Laden or the Islamic State group, in part because it justifies massive expenditures on the most expensive weapons systems.

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains a central focus, the appetite for countering China’s own expansive weapons and technology development is on track to grow for years to come. The 2023 NDAA expands military support for Taiwan with a five-year package worth up to $10 billion in financing to purchase U.S. weapons, as well as a contingency fund of up to $100 million a year through 2032 to maintain a munitions stockpile. It also provides for running “wargames that allow operational commands to improve joint and combined war planning for contingencies involving a well-equipped adversary in a counter-intervention campaign” and exercises that “develop the lethality and survivability of combined forces against” China. Under the NDAA, the Pentagon would develop a plan “to expedite military assistance to Taiwan in the event of a crisis or conflict.” All of this is aimed at maintaining “the capacity of the United States to resist a fait accompli that would jeopardize the security of the people on Taiwan” by deterring China from using force to “invade and seize control of Taiwan before the United States can respond effectively.”

Since taking office, Biden has stewarded the multi-administration expansion of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. In September, he approved a new round of more than $1 billion in weapons, the largest authorization Biden has made since taking office. In its October 12 National Security Strategy, the White House claimed that “Russia’s strategic limitations have been exposed following its war of aggression against Ukraine” and designated China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.” It asserted that China “presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge.” While noting that “Russia poses an immediate and ongoing threat to the regional security order in Europe and it is a source of disruption and instability globally,” the White House report said Russia “lacks the across the spectrum capabilities of” China.

“This Isn’t Just Another Airplane”

On the evening of Friday, December 2, in a ceremony attended by senior U.S. officials, members of Congress, and industry executives, Northrop Grumman unveiled the Pentagon’s next-generation nuclear-capable strategic bomber, the B-21 Raider. The first new stealth bomber produced in more than 30 years, the Raider “will form the backbone of the future Air Force bomber force.” The $700 million bat-winged aircraft will be capable of both manned and unmanned operations, and a first flight is scheduled for 2023. The Pentagon reportedly plans to build at least 100 of the warplanes, with an estimated cost of $32 billion, including research and development, through 2027.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with an almost religious reverence for the nuclear bomber as a large tarp was pulled from its body in a sort of baptismal ceremony at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. “This isn’t just another airplane. It’s not just another acquisition. It is a symbol and a source of the fighting spirit that President Reagan spoke of,” Austin said. “It’s the embodiment of America’s determination to defend the republic that we all love.” He declared that “50 years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft. Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky,” adding, “This bomber will be able to defend our country with new weapons that haven’t even been invented yet.” Prior to his nomination to be defense secretary, Austin served on the board of Raytheon.

MIM-104 Patriot short-range anti-aircraft missile systems produced by Raytheon, located at Rzeszow Airport, close to the Ukraine border on July 24, 2022 in Poland.

Photo: Christophe Gateau/picture-alliance/dpa/AP

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U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine Grows to Historic Proportions — Along With Risks

For months, Trumpist political figures in the House, led by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been pushing legislation to “audit” the Ukraine aid spending. While it is difficult to take Greene seriously for a volcanic flow of reasons, including her own purchase of as much as $15,000 in Lockheed Martin stock two days before the Russian invasion in February, there is a reasonable case to make for investigating the money being spent, the weapons flowing to Kyiv, and who is ultimately benefiting. “As of early November, U.S. monitors had performed just two in-person inspections since the war began in February — accounting for about 10 percent of the 22,000 U.S.-provided weapons,” according to the Washington Post. The Biden administration, the paper reported, has said it does not want to send inspectors to the front lines in Ukraine because the inspectors would likely require armed guards, potentially creating “a situation that risks being interpreted by the Kremlin as direct American involvement in the war.”

On Tuesday, Greene’s resolution, which would have required the Biden administration to hand over all documents related to Ukraine spending within 14 days, failed to pass the Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee. Democrats, who united to block the proposal, portrayed the resolution as undermining the war effort against Russia. “This is not the time for us to be divided,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the Democratic chair of the committee. “We’ve held together with NATO and the E.U. and our allies. Let’s not fall into this trap.” While the loudest opponents of Ukraine aid on Capitol Hill have been far-right Republicans — many but not all aligned with Trump — Greene’s resolution showed that more mainstream Republicans are getting on board the audit train ahead of January when the GOP takes control of the House. Most Republicans support Biden’s Ukraine weapons transfers, with some saying they would back a Ukraine audit “because it did not claw back any current or future funding for Ukraine.”

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a supporter of the Ukraine war cause, led a successful bipartisan effort to include some oversight provisions in the NDAA. The bill would require the Pentagon’s inspector general to report to Congress any and all efforts to oversee and track the weapons and other aid delivered to Ukraine. The Senate Armed Services Committee described the authority in the bill as requiring “a report on the framework the Inspectors General have adopted to oversee U.S. assistance to Ukraine and whether there are any gaps in oversight or funding for such activities.” It requires the inspector general by next March to present congressional defense committees “with a comprehensive briefing on the status and findings of Inspector General oversight, reviews, audits, and inspections of the activities conducted by the Department of Defense responds [sic] to Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine.”

Throughout the year, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has been pushing for a special inspector general to oversee Ukraine spending and temporarily delayed a Ukraine spending measure in May to prove his point. “You shouldn’t shove all $40 billion out the door without any oversight,” Paul said. “And having a special inspector general, we did it in Afghanistan — it didn’t stop all the waste — it at least makes the thieves think twice about stealing the money.” In May, 57 House Republicans and 11 Senate Republicans voted against the Ukraine spending bill. No Democrats voted against the measure.

The Biden White House has shown no sign of pumping the brakes on Ukraine spending and arms transfers. Biden also has made clear he intends to push ahead with the aggressive U.S. military buildup in preparation for future conflict with China, a position with widespread backing across the aisle. With a divided Congress, the 2024 elections looming, and the Trump question hovering over it all, a lot of the Democrats’ legislative agenda will be tough to implement after the new year. But the short and long-term future looks bright for the Russia and China hawks, the defense industry, and its Democratic and Republican patrons on Capitol Hill. On these matters, bipartisanship remains alive and well. The House could vote on the NDAA as soon as this week, and the Senate is expected to swiftly follow suit to get the bill to Biden’s desk.

The post The War Caucus Always Wins appeared first on The Intercept.

But then Milley crossed what he most certainly never imagined to be a tripwire when he said, “And they need to get to the negotiating table.”

The general cited the multiyear death toll of 20 million during World War I — caused, he said, by the failure to negotiate an earlier end to the war — and went on to suggest that it would be better for the war in Ukraine to end soon in negotiation rather than continue on indefinitely.

“There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably — in the true sense of the word — is maybe not achievable through military means, and therefore you have to turn to other means,” Milley said during the November 9 event at the Economic Club of New York. Referring to recent Russian setbacks at the hands of Ukrainian forces and the coming winter, Milley went on: “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it. Seize the moment.”

Milley clearly did not think he had said anything controversial. A day later, he was making similar points during an interview on CNBC. “We’ve seen the Ukrainian military fight the Russian military to a standstill,” Milley said. “What the future holds is not known with any degree of certainty, but we think there are some possibilities here for some diplomatic solutions.”

But as snippets of Milley’s remarks in New York started to spread, the White House began fielding angry calls from Ukrainian officials protesting Milley’s comments and asking if they indicated that the U.S. might be getting soft in its support for Ukraine’s stated goal of militarily expelling Russia from its territory. Or if the White House did not believe that Ukraine could win the war.

As the Biden administration “scrambled” to “clean up Milley remarks” and “handle Ukraine’s feelings,” Milley defended his assessment in a press briefing at the Pentagon alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “The probability of a Ukrainian military victory defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine to include what they define or what the claim is Crimea, the probability of that happening anytime soon is not high, militarily,” Milley said in response to a reporter’s question on November 16. “There may be a political solution where, politically, the Russians withdraw, that’s possible.” He added: “You want to negotiate from a position of strength. Russia right now is on its back.”

This made some Russia hawks apoplectic. In an essay for The Atlantic titled, “Cut the Baloney Realism: Russia’s war on Ukraine need not end in negotiation,” Eliot A. Cohen, a former adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asserted that “the argument for diplomacy now is wrongheaded,” writing: “The calls for negotiations, like the strategically inane revelations of our fears of escalation — inane because they practically invite the Russians to get inside our head and rattle us — are dangerous.” Instead, Cohen declared, it is “time to pass the ammunition and to stop talking about talking,” suggesting that Ukraine should be given top-tier U.S. drones and advanced fighter aircraft like F-16s as well as “a tank fleet superior to that of Russia.”

In a column for the Wall Street Journal, former Pentagon official Seth Cropsey suggested that Milley should be replaced and said his comments on Ukraine were part of a track record of being soft on China and “apparently resisting then-President Trump’s desire to strike the [Iranian] regime in the final months of his term.” Like Cohen, Cropsey — who served under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush — also argued for increasing weapons shipments to Ukraine. “U.S. interests would be better served by providing Ukraine with support to retake more territory from Russia and declaring Ukrainian victory the aim of U.S. policy,” he wrote. “At some point there might be negotiations in which Russia gains something. Yet these talks should be undertaken only when Ukraine has a superior position.”

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, told Politico that he believed Ukraine would expel Russian forces from the country by summer. “People should get their heads around the idea that Ukraine is going to defeat Russia on the battlefield, the old fashioned way. They have irreversible momentum,” he said. “Now is the time to put the pedal to the metal.”

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Democratic and Republican Senators Demand Transfer of Gray Eagle Drone to Ukraine

Conceding the massive, unprecedented U.S. military shipments and other support to Ukraine, it is undeniable that President Joe Biden has at key points treaded cautiously in his stance toward Moscow. He and other U.S. officials have consistently said they do not want to risk direct military conflict with Russia. The president recently won some praise from the Kremlin for the “measured and more professional response” to his handling of the missile that landed in Poland killing two people on November 15. While major news organizations reported that it was a Russian attack, Biden urged caution and refuted the claims, which turned out to be false. The White House has also stopped several weapons transfers to Ukraine — in some cases on grounds that misuse of the weapons against Russia could lead to further escalation. At times, the White House has sought assurances from Ukraine that it would not use long-range U.S. weapons “to attack Russian territory.” Biden has also slow-walked a decision on whether to give Gray Eagle weaponized drones to Ukraine, despite mounting pressure from the industry, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, and Kyiv.

Biden isn’t dovish on Russia. But the administration has its own calculus for how it wants this war to proceed, and frequently games out how it might end.

None of that indicates that Biden is dovish on Russia — he isn’t. But the administration has its own calculus for how it wants this war to proceed, and frequently games out how it might end. Some news reports have described “a broad sense” within the Pentagon that winter will provide an opportunity to reach a political settlement, while senior national security officials, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have opposed pushing Ukraine to negotiate. “One official explained that the State Department is on the opposite side of the pole from Milley,” according to CNN. “That dynamic has led to a unique situation where military brass are more fervently pushing for diplomacy than U.S. diplomats.” Milley’s public remarks offered a glimpse into the informed analysis of one powerful camp within the administration. “Milley is much more willing to just say what he thinks,” one U.S. official said. “I’m sure they sometimes wish he wouldn’t always say the quiet part out loud.”

Despite some moments of narrow strategic restraint from the White House, Biden and virtually the entirety of established political power across the U.S. government is unified in the project of flooding Ukraine with weapons and other military support. Milley, it must be noted, has been a major proponent of heavily arming Ukraine and has advocated continuing to do so indefinitely. Biden currently has a request before Congress for nearly $40 billion in new aid to Ukraine, and the military component of his proposal would, with the swipe of a pen, more than double the entire U.S. expenditure since the invasion began in February.

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There is legislation pending in Congress that indicates that the U.S. government believes the Ukraine war may continue for years. On October 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee submitted its amended draft of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2023. Nestled within the draft is a provision that would establish an “emergency” multiyear plan to award massive defense contracts to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems, and other war corporations to produce weapons for Ukraine and to “replenish” U.S. stockpiles as well as those of “foreign allies and partners.” An amendment, spearheaded by New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and co-sponsored by Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, would allow the Pentagon to award noncompetitive no-bid contracts to arms manufacturers under the plan.

Congress is “supportive of this. They’re going to give us multiyear authority, and they’re going to give us funding to really put into the industrial base — and I’m talking billions of dollars into the industrial base — to fund these production lines,” said the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, Bill LaPlante, in remarks reported by Defense News. “That, I predict, is going to happen, and it’s happening now. And then people will have to say: ‘I guess they were serious about it.’ But we have not done that since the Cold War.”

Among the weapons that would be preauthorized for procurement by the Pentagon, according to the legislation, are: 100,000 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, 30,000 Hellfire missiles, 36,000 Joint Air-to-Ground missiles, and 700 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems — all manufactured by Lockheed Martin. The list also includes a staggering stream of other missiles, rockets, and ammunition.

It is often said that in war there are no winners. But that has never really been true, certainly not in modern U.S. wars. From Vietnam to Korea, and Iraq to Afghanistan, the winner has always been the same. That victor also prevailed in the Cold War and will most certainly do so again throughout this new cold war that is being rapidly ushered into existence. The winner is the war industry.

That a powerful U.S. general would suggest that it might be better for the war to end through negotiation rather than prolonging the bloodbath, with Ukrainian civilians paying the highest price, is not an earth-shattering development. But the response to Milley’s expression of that sentiment, combined with the ever-intensifying preparations for a protracted war in which the U.S. is the premiere arms dealer, should spur a discussion over whose interests are being served right now.

Perhaps more significant than Milley’s comments about negotiations was his assessment that a victory for Ukraine is likely unachievable on a purely military level. Already, some European officials are warning that the appetite in their countries to continue the war in Ukraine is waning and that “the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance.” As one senior European Union official told Politico, “The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons.”

The NDAA now before Congress is a reminder of the prescience exhibited by President Dwight Eisenhower in his January 1961 farewell address. “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” Eisenhower said. “We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.” Eisenhower warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

The post War Industry Looking Forward to “Multiyear Authority” in Ukraine appeared first on The Intercept.

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Despite aggressive lobbying from the drone industry, the Gray Eagle’s manufacturer General Atomics, the Ukrainian government, and a slew of U.S. lawmakers, the Biden administration and Pentagon have so far declined to approve the transfer of the drones. They have cited concerns about exporting sensitive components on the drone, including a Raytheon-manufactured targeting and surveillance system. While the U.S. has exported previous generations of weaponized drones to its allies, it has never approved a foreign sale of the Gray Eagle.

In their November 22 letter, the senators — including Republicans Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley as well as Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Mark Kelly — wrote, “Most importantly, armed [drones] could find and attack Russian warships in the Black Sea, breaking its coercive blockade and alleviate dual pressures on the Ukrainian economy and global food prices.” The senators asserted, “A Russian victory over Ukraine would significantly damage American security and prosperity.”

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As The Intercept noted on November 18, the proliferation of drone warfare in Ukraine has been fueled by both sides — with Russia utilizing Iranian-made Shahed drones in swarm attacks against Ukrainian targets, including civilian infrastructure. The U.S. and other NATO countries have given Kyiv some 2,500 Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost “suicide” drones, which effectively function as small, remote-controlled cruise missiles. Ukraine has also been using larger Turkish-manufactured Bayraktar TB-2 drones, which are a cheaper and less powerful version of the premiere U.S. drones used widely in “counterterrorism” operations in the Middle East and Africa.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly indicated that he does not want to unnecessarily increase U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine, and the White House has sought to calibrate its actions in support of Ukraine in part based on how Russian President Vladimir Putin will perceive them. Already, Russian officials routinely state that they are not just fighting Kyiv’s forces, but also U.S. and NATO infrastructure. On November 9, the Wall Street Journal reported that Biden was concerned the transfer of the Gray Eagles “could escalate the conflict and signal to Moscow that the U.S. was providing weapons that could target positions inside Russia.”

There are indications that the U.S. is considering modifying some of the components on the Gray Eagle and swapping them out for less sensitive technologies in order to move forward with supplying the drones to Ukraine. In their letter, the senators noted that AGM-114 Hellfire missiles “have been reviewed and exported to over twenty-five U.S. partners.” Last week, a Pentagon spokesperson said that “nothing has been ruled out.” The senators asked the White House to respond to their letter no later than November 30.

The post Democratic and Republican Senators Demand Transfer of Gray Eagle Drone to Ukraine appeared first on The Intercept.

It is no coincidence that the defense industry is on track to spend less money lobbying the federal government than at any point since the initial years of the Iraq War.

The flow of weapons and other military aid to Ukraine has widespread bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, though some top Republicans have indicated that they are going to exert more scrutiny over the spending once they take control of the House of Representatives next year. There has been almost no dissent within the Democratic Party on the administration’s stance. The kerfuffle in October over the withdrawn letter from the Congressional Progressive Caucus to Biden “that attempted to gingerly open a conversation about a potential diplomatic end to Russia’s war on Ukraine” dramatized how little room there is within the party for alternative views.

Since Russia launched its invasion in February, the only consequential debates on support for Ukraine have revolved around whether the U.S. and NATO should get more directly involved in confronting Moscow (which Biden has consistently rejected) and, in specific cases, whether the U.S. should give Ukraine sensitive defense technology and weapons systems. The Ukraine war has presented the defense industry the opportunity to have its latest innovations tested on a real battlefield against a powerful nation-state, with the added perceived geopolitical bonus of significantly degrading the war capabilities and stockpiles of Russia, a country the U.S. has, once again, declared its arch-nemesis. At the same time, the Pentagon has expressed clear reservations about how high up the proprietary defense technology chain this trend should extend.

“There needs to be an assessment, as the U.S. has increased the kinds of weapons it’s providing [Ukraine]: Will it appreciatively change the situation on the battlefield in the Ukrainian’s favor and are the risks to that in terms of Putin’s perceptions manageable?” said Matt Duss, a longtime foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders who is now a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. “If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then they [Ukraine] will probably get them.” Duss added that he thinks “the Biden people have been smart about how Putin interprets U.S. actions.”

Over the past several months, a quiet battle has been simmering in Washington over whether the Biden administration should permit Ukraine to purchase what would be the most sophisticated weaponized drone deployed to date in the war against Russia’s invasion, the MQ-1C Gray Eagle. Capable of firing four high-powered Hellfire missiles or eight Stinger munitions, the unofficial successor to the widely used Predator drone has been deployed in U.S. counterterrorism missions in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, particularly under presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Unlike the Predator and Reaper drones, the U.S. has never approved the export of the Gray Eagle, even to its allies. It would require sign-off from a number of government bodies, including regulators at the State and Defense Departments.

In addition to its substantial weapons payload, the Gray Eagle has sophisticated reconnaissance and intelligence technology and can remain airborne for more than 24 hours. This has made it an ideal weapon for sustained monitoring of structures that are believed to house “high-value targets” or for conducting long-range attacks in undeclared war zones or “denied areas” without the need to use warplanes, sea-launched cruise missiles, or ground troops.

But the war in Ukraine is being fought in stark contrast to the “targeted killing” operations utilized in the so-called war on terrorism where the U.S. was engaged in asymmetric warfare, mostly against non-nation-state actors. Both Ukraine and Russia possess and regularly utilize weaponized drones in battle, though the models they possess are several tiers below the quality and lethality of the premiere systems used repeatedly by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Ukraine has used Turkish-made Bayraktar drones, which are a much cheaper and far more vulnerable version of the top-level U.S. drones, such as Reapers, Predators, and Gray Eagles. While the Bayraktar’s capabilities and potential firepower are inferior to its U.S. analogs, Ukraine has used the drone to great effect against Russian forces, particularly early in the conflict against logistical supply routes and artillery positions.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine is using drones to conduct operations that even vaguely resemble the much-vaunted (and often highly exaggerated U.S. claims of) “surgical” strikes against individual “high-value targets.” Russia, in particular, is using drones indiscriminately and has employed swarms of single-use “kamikaze” drones that detonate when the drone, packed with explosives, crashes into a target or structure. In September, Russia began deploying Iranian-made Shahed-136 single-use drones to conduct such attacks against Ukrainian targets, including civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian President Voldomyr Zelenskyy recently claimed that Moscow secretly purchased from Iran as many as 2,400 of the drones, which cost $20,000 each and fly low enough to evade most radar systems. He offered no evidence to support the alleged number of drones, saying it was “according to our intelligence.” In contrast, John Kirby, the communications coordinator for the U.S. National Security Council, alleged on October 21 that Russia has acquired “dozens of [unmanned aerial vehicles] so far” from Iran “and will likely continue to receive additional shipments in the future.” Iran has acknowledged selling Moscow the drones, though it claims they were not equipped with munitions and were delivered before the invasion. Iran denies that it has continued to supply them. The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced new sanctions against Iranian and Emirati businesses it claims are involved with the alleged shipments.

Defense analysts have speculated that Russia turned to Tehran for drones because its own supply had been severely degraded by Ukrainian attacks and because it has not invested in developing sophisticated weapons systems like those used by the U.S. “Despite previously seeking to become a significant drone power, Moscow has been sluggish to prioritize its UAVs development,” noted Francesco Salesio Schiavi in a recent report for the Italian Institute for International Political Studies. Schiavi wrote: “In eight months of active combat, the Russian UAVs fleet has been decimated by Ukrainian countermeasures, and its reserves of expensive long-range cruise missiles have declined sharply. The reconstruction of these arsenals will probably take years for Moscow to reach pre-war levels again, especially given the restrictions placed on Russian access to foreign-made, high-tech components necessary for this purpose. At this stage, Tehran’s support represents an ideal interim solution for rapidly deploying relatively cheap UAVs until new supplies or a new generation of missiles and combat drones are available to the Kremlin.”

The U.S. has provided Ukraine with its own versions of the kamikaze drones. The Switchblade, which has been used by the U.S. Army and Marines, can fit in a backpack and is capable of small-scale attacks against personnel, vehicles, and small aircraft. Ukraine has received 700 Switchblades, which are essentially a small remote-controlled missile, modeled after the Javelin surface-to-air warhead. The U.S. has also delivered at least 1,800 Phoenix Ghost “suicide” drones to Ukraine, which function similarly to the Switchblades. In addition to small weaponized drones, Washington has provided Kyiv with Puma and ScanEagle drones for surveillance and reconnaissance. Ukraine has also used U.S.-supplied underwater sea drones in attacks on Russian naval vessels.

While the Shahed-136 drones can only carry 80 to 90 pounds of explosives, the $10 million Gray Eagle is a far more expensive and sophisticated system capable of repeated use at far greater range than any unmanned system in the Ukraine war. It could theoretically enable Ukraine to conduct strikes deep into Russian territory. The Gray Eagle’s manufacturer, General Atomics, has made no secret of its desire to send the drones to Ukraine. “If you think HIMARS [the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System] changed things, put some Gray Eagles in the air and see what happens next,” said General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley. “No one wants to see the significant gains made by the Ukrainians erode due to inaction.”

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The Biden administration and the Pentagon have, to date, declined to authorize the sale of the drones to Ukraine, citing concerns that if one was to go down, its sophisticated technology, including the Multi-Spectral Targeting System manufactured by Raytheon, could fall into Russian hands. The Biden administration also has expressed concerns that Russia’s air defenses are more advanced than what the drones have faced in the U.S. counterterrorism operations where the targets are not soldiers of a massive and well-funded nation-state. General Atomics said it had offered detailed responses to “repeated concerns about technology transfer” from the Pentagon. Among these was a proposal to retrofit the Gray Eagles by swapping out some technological systems for less sensitive ones before Ukraine takes possession. The company also said it has laid out “options for increased battlefield survivability.”

Over the summer, it appeared that the White House was leaning toward authorizing the sale of four Gray Eagles, with Reuters reporting on June 1 that the administration had actually signed off on the transfer and “intends to notify Congress of the potential sale to Ukraine in the coming days with a public announcement expected after that.” But two weeks later, the Pentagon’s Defense Technology Security Administration, the body responsible for reviewing foreign weapons sales for potential risks to U.S. security, halted the process over concerns about compromising sensitive technology.

The Biden administration and the Pentagon have declined to authorize the sale of Gray Eagle drones to Ukraine, citing concerns that if one was to go down, its sophisticated technology could fall into Russian hands.

On September 21, a bipartisan group of 17 lawmakers, including House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urging him to expedite the transfer of the Gray Eagles to Kyiv. “There continue to be delays in delivering Gray Eagle systems to Ukraine despite urgent requests from Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov and ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova,” they asserted. “While important, thorough risk assessments and mitigation should not come at the expense of Ukrainian lives.” The lawmakers, led by Democrats Marcy Kaptur and Mike Quigley and Republicans Brian Fitzpatrick and Andy Harris, argued that “Ukraine could better confront Russian threats” with armed drones “like the MQ-1C Gray Eagle or the MQ-9A Reaper.” General Atomics has also aggressively lobbied for the drones to be given to Ukraine, with its spokesperson denouncing what he called an “endless wait-and-see response” from the administration. General Atomics said it had offered to train Ukrainian personnel on how to operate the drones at no cost to U.S. taxpayers.

For its part, Ukraine has continued to press its case with the White House; its defense minister wrote a letter on November 2 reiterating Kyiv’s desire to buy four of the drones. On November 9, the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration was not budging, saying the White House was concerned that the sale of the drones “could escalate the conflict and signal to Moscow that the U.S. was providing weapons that could target positions inside Russia.” This stance is reminiscent of that taken by the White House in March when Ukraine sought to obtain as many as 28 MiG-29 warplanes from Poland, and the White House vacillated before ultimately killing the deal.

Several members of Congress, General Atomics, and the Ukrainian government continue to lobby the Biden administration to change course, and their only hope appears to rest on whether the White House would allow the sales to proceed with a modified version of the Gray Eagle. “There are specific and very technical tweaks and neutering that can be done to these that may make it possible in the nearer term,” an unnamed congressional official told CNN on November 14. “But those things take time and are fairly complex.” The administration has indicated that the final word will come from Austin.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, an international law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said the Pentagon’s stance on the risks to its technology is “yet another indication of U.S. foreign and security policy stuck in Cold War thinking. It’s also another example of post-Cold War disinterest in international law.” The U.S. “advantage or edge in military might and weapons technology depends on staying ahead of competitors. That never happens,” she added. “China has a far larger standing military. Every military now has drones. The Russians will get the MQ-1C technology whether the U.S. provides it to Ukraine or not. Weapons technology does not remain secret — it just fuels arms races.” China recently exhibited its new Wing Loong-3 drone, which it is marketing as a competitor to the Gray Eagle. State media outlets in China have reported that the drone can carry up to 16 missiles and other munitions. The U.S. drone industry has lamented what some analysts charge is a de facto U.S. policy of ceding the export market to China, Turkey, and other drone merchants.

“Weapons technology does not remain secret — it just fuels arms races.”

New York Times reporter Lara Jakes recently published a deep dive into how “Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come.” Jakes quoted the remarks of Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, at an October NATO conference in Virginia. “Ukraine is the best test ground, as we have the opportunity to test all hypotheses in battle and introduce revolutionary change in military tech and modern warfare,” Fedorov said. “In the last two weeks, we have been convinced once again the wars of the future will be about maximum drones and minimal humans.” In his video address, Fedorov called drones “a game changer of ongoing war,” adding that “by massively using them, Ukraine can win faster and save more lives of our people.” He highlighted Ukraine’s initiative, “Army of Drones,” announced in July, with an aim “to secure the entire frontline of 2,470 kilometers with [surveillance] drones.”

Drone warfare has come a long way since the United States launched a Hellfire missile from a CIA Predator drone in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, the first night of “Operation Enduring Freedom.” While that strike, intended to hit Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, failed, it holds a place in history as the opening salvo in what swiftly became a global race to develop and deploy weaponized drones. A month later, on November 2, 2001, the CIA conducted its first drone strike outside a declared battlefield, hitting a vehicle in Yemen and killing six suspected Al Qaeda members, one of whom was a U.S. citizen. Today, more than three dozen countries are in possession of armed drones, and they have been used widely in several conflicts. Azerbaijan made extensive use of them in its 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war against Armenia, and Syria has used them against Kurdish rebels in Syria. The Islamic State has also used its own improvised drones in Iraq and Syria.

At the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States opened a spigot through which billions of dollars in lethal military hardware and assistance has been funneled to Kyiv. Russian officials often say they are not just fighting Ukraine’s forces but also “NATO infrastructure.” Since Biden took office, the U.S. has given Ukraine nearly $19 billion in overt military aid, including tanks, drones, remote-controlled boats, radar systems, surveillance technology, a vast supply of guns and ammunition, and virtually every other tool of modern warfare. The Biden administration has, broadly speaking, received widespread support for its Ukraine stance with congressional opposition to the massive military aid packages largely relegated to a few dozen lawmakers, mostly Trump-aligned Republicans.

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On Tuesday, the White House requested more than $37 billion in additional support for Ukraine, more than $21 billion of it earmarked for military and intelligence operations. “Together, with strong, bipartisan support in the Congress, we have provided significant assistance that has been critical to Ukraine’s success on the battlefield — and we cannot let that support run dry,” the administration wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on November 15. If passed, the package would more than double the total military aid to Ukraine since February. Biden may try to push it through during the lame-duck session before Republicans assume control of the House. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy has pledged to end the “blank-check” policy toward Ukraine, which he later said meant that the Republicans would impose greater oversight and accountability for the expenditures.

“Defense spending is somewhere where austerity just seems never to apply. We can’t seem to pay for Americans’ education, we can’t get people health care. Yet a constantly escalating defense budget goes through every year with relatively little turbulence. That itself is a condemnation of our political system,” said Duss, the former Sanders adviser. A longtime critic of U.S. militarism, Duss has nonetheless been an outspoken proponent of sending military aid to Ukraine. He said he recognizes “the policy I support continues to enrich defense contractors, enriches the military-industrial complex,” but added, “I think the goal of reforming that military industrial complex and weakening its power over our politics, that project continues in the longer term even though the policy I support in the shorter term is essentially paying them off.”

While the Biden administration has dramatically scaled back U.S. drone attacks in comparison to Obama and Trump, it continues to use them in so-called targeted strikes. There have been at least 12 drone strikes in Somalia in 2022 alone. Early in his presidency, Biden authorized a strike in Afghanistan that wiped out a civilian family in Kabul on August 29, 2021. He also used a drone strike to assassinate Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in July.

The administration recently concluded a review of lethal counterterrorism operations, including drone strikes, and reportedly reversed several of the Trump-era changes that loosened rules for conducting such attacks. While the document has not been made public, the New York Times reported that Biden largely returned to the Obama-era structures for assessing potential civilian consequences of strikes and implemented a requirement that Biden personally approve the adding of alleged terror targets on the U.S. kill list.

The post Will Biden Sell Advanced Drones to Ukraine? appeared first on The Intercept.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney walk to the Oval Office, on Nov. 17, 2004, in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Ron Edmonds/AP

“The President and Vice President were seated in chairs in front of the fireplace. The President’s demeanor throughout was relaxed. He answered questions without notes,” according to the document drafted by the commission’s Executive Director Philip Zelikow. “The portrait of Washington was over the fireplace, which was flanked by busts of Lincoln and Churchill. Paintings of southwestern landscapes are on the wall. It was a beautiful spring day.” The document, whose declassification was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is not an official transcript but is described as “a memorandum for the record.” It was authorized for release by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel.

One of the most striking aspects of the declassified document is the apparent absence of even a glimmer of self-awareness by Bush about the significance of the death and destruction he was unleashing with his global war. The interview took place just as a massive insurgency was erupting in Iraq against a U.S. occupation that would kill thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. While the document is a rough transcript and summary, Bush comes off as almost childishly simplistic in his insights and analysis. The lack of any sensitive information contained within the document should spur questions as to why it took more than 18 years to be made public.

While the document is a rough transcript and summary, Bush comes off as almost childishly simplistic in his insights and analysis.

The declassified document does not contain any groundbreaking revelations, but it does offer some new texture to the internal events immediately following the attacks. That morning, after the first plane had hit the World Trade Center, Bush was reading “The Pet Goat” with second grade students at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County, Florida. Bush told the commissioners that he had seen the first plane hit but thought it was an accident. “He recalled that he and others thought the building had been hit by a twin engine plane. He remembered thinking, what a terrible pilot.” Soon after the second plane hit the south tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., chief of staff Andy Card approached Bush as he sat listening to the students reciting more passages from “The Pet Goat” and informed him that it appeared the U.S. was under attack.

The commissioners asked the commander-in-chief why he continued to sit in the classroom. “He was trying to absorb the news. He remembered a child, or someone, reading. He remembered watching the press pool and noticing them talking on their phones. He realized the country was watching his behavior. He had to send the right signals. He wanted to collect his thoughts,” according to the notes. “He felt he should project calm and strength, until he could understand better what was happening.” Bush “thought it was important to keep his body language calm in the face of danger. As the president, he was conscious that ‘people react off me.’”

Perhaps the most interesting passages from the document relate to the extent to which Cheney was empowered to effectively take command authority that morning. Bush said he was pressured to get on Air Force One, so he “made some quick remarks and blasted out of there.” Cheney, he recalled, urged him, “Don’t come home.” Cheney “told him that Washington was under attack. He strongly recommended that the President delay his return to Washington. There was no telling how much more the threat might be. The President agreed, reluctantly.” Once Cheney was at the helm inside the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, an underground bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, he and Bush discussed the “rules of engagement” for the evolving situation, including confronting other potential hijacked aircraft. “Yes, engage the enemy. You have the authority to shoot down an airplane,” Bush reportedly told Cheney. “The President understood this from his experience in the Texas Air National Guard,” according to the notes. “He had been trained to shoot down planes. He understood generally how this worked — one plane would lock on, one would ID. He understood the consequences for the pilot, how a pilot might feel to get the order to shoot down a US airliner. It would be tough.”

The document describes a chaotic scene with communications equipment failing and Bush being overwhelmed with rumors and reports about other potential targets, including Air Force One and his private ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush “had heard of the fog of war. That day he saw it, firsthand. He wanted to go back to D.C.” Instead, Bush was flown to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana while Cheney ran things from the bunker under the White House. The document states that during this period, the secure phone line between Bush and Cheney kept failing. Bush also tried to reach Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but said that “they couldn’t find him.” Bush “was very frustrated about not being able to make contact with different people.” He also complained that “there was not good television on” Air Force One. He was eventually moved to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, where he had better secure communications equipment. Bush would spend some nine hours aboard Air Force One that day and did not return to the White House until 7 p.m.

Cheney, according to the document, gave direct authorization to the military to shoot down civilian aircraft after being presented with intelligence that the planes had been hijacked. “Then they heard that an aircraft was down in Pennsylvania. The Vice President thought we’d shot it down. It took a while to sort this out. In the next half hour there were two or three occasions like this: a report of an incoming, would he reiterate authorization? Yes. In every case, though, the problem was resolved without shots being fired.” According to the declassified notes, there were five reports of additional hijackings that all turned out to be false. When one of the commissioners pressed Cheney about apparent discrepancies in the timeline of when exactly Bush gave the vice president authority to direct the shooting down of U.S. civilian planes, “The President said: Look, he didn’t give orders without my permission.”

One of the 9/11 commissioners “asked if the President or the Vice President had been involved in permitting planes carrying Saudi nationals to leave after 9/11. No, the President said. He had no idea about this until he read about it in the papers.” Cheney, the document noted, “also gave a negative answer,” but added that his answer was “hard to hear.”

Several 9/11 commissioners raised the issue of the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing from August 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” That document cites foreign intelligence indicating that Osama bin Laden “wanted to hijack US aircraft” in an effort to free Islamic extremist prisoners held by the U.S. on terror convictions. It also stated that the FBI had information “that indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” Bush repeatedly rejected the notion that he had received any “actionable intelligence” and said it was just a “general assessment,” and that he had personally requested information that ultimately led to the production of that specific briefing. “It reaches the conclusion that Bin Ladin wants to attack us,” Bush told the commissioners. “Yeah, the President commented, he’s trying to do that. So is al Qaeda.” Bush claimed that none of the briefings he received “was commenting on a threat in America. There was no actionable intelligence on such a threat — not one.” Bush told the commissioners that CIA Director George Tenet told him, “The threat was overseas — that was what George said.” Bush “said he thought that if there had been a serious concern in August [2001], he would have known about it.”

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The declassified document also contains some reflections from Bush and Cheney on the initial stages of the so-called war on terror. Bush complained that U.S. allies were reluctant to join in the global assassination program implemented after 9/11. “On bringing terrorists to justice, their approach was not as tough as ours. Foreign governments were less willing to kill them, to go after them in the remote places of the world. Our own agencies, the President said, were pretty darn robust.”

Cheney also decried congressional oversight of covert operations, particularly those run by the CIA, saying it had weakened the agency. “The standards that had been applied to the intelligence community had left them inclined to be risk averse. The penalties were high for getting involved in actions that might later be judged to be inappropriate,” the notes read. Cheney “mentioned the example of having nasty people on the CIA payroll. The officials then try to be careful; they don’t take things on.” Throughout his political career, Cheney was notorious for despising congressional oversight of U.S. covert operations. Five days after 9/11, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.”

When asked how the U.S. could “make the country less vulnerable to attack,” Bush “said they were trying to kill a lot of the enemy. They are killers. We had to kill them before they kill us.”

The document also describes some of the White House efforts to cajole Muslim nations, like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, into supporting a much wider U.S. war. The Saudis, Bush asserted, were “unhappy” with the U.S. position on Israel, and “Pakistan was too close to the Taliban. They had to change Pakistan’s behavior. But the country was smothered in congressional sanctions; there were no carrots they could use. After 9/11 this changed.” In the case of both nations, the document notes that following alleged Al Qaeda attacks against them, they fell more in line with the White House’s wishes. “The enemy helped give us an opportunity,” according to the document. In Pakistan there were two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003. “That helped him change some more.” In Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda took responsibility for the May 2003 bombing of a series of residential compounds in Riyadh, including one operated by the U.S. private military contractor Vinnell Corporation. “After that, the Saudis were better warfighters.”

When asked how the U.S. could “make the country less vulnerable to attack,” Bush “said they were trying to kill a lot of the enemy. They are killers. We had to kill them before they kill us.”

In an unusual admission, the document states that Bush acknowledged that the U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq were “recruiting terrorists. Their propaganda with reports of starving Iraqi children were hurting us.”

Bush also told the commissioners that working with Vladimir Putin, who had assumed the presidency in Russia in 2000, “was important,” especially to facilitate the use by U.S. military and intelligence of bases in central Asia, including Uzbekistan, to stage its operations in Afghanistan. “He spoke with Putin about this in the summer of 2001. He remembered Putin complaining about Pakistan — and about Saudi Arabia — being safe havens for the terrorists, urging the need to find the source of these problems.” Developing a better relationship with Putin and Russia, Bush said, “would make it easier for the U.S. to base activity in the ‘Stans.’ This was hard for Russia historically, to accept.”

The document describes a lengthy discussion on why the U.S. did not actively try to kill bin Laden before 9/11. Bill Clinton did sign a presidential finding to kill bin Laden and authorized a missile attack against a suspected Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in 1998 following the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Without directly criticizing Clinton, Bush decried the launching of cruise missiles in an effort to assassinate bin Laden. Bush “said he was concerned about an empty response that Bin Ladin and others would use to propaganda advantage,” according to the notes. “If that had been ineffective, the enemy would have used it to show their ability to thwart U.S. technology and military might.” Bush “said you must use ground forces for a job like this.”

As the commissioners questioned Bush about why he did not authorize military activity to kill bin Laden in the months before 9/11, Bush mentioned that he had recently spoken with British Prime Minister Tony Blair who observed that “they were being criticized for not launching a preemptive attack against Afghanistan. And they were criticized for preemptively attacking Iraq.” Blair allegedly told Bush that if the president had said “before 9/11 that he wanted to put forces in Afghanistan, he — Blair — would have been floored. ‘I would have looked at you like a nut,’ Blair said. There was an appetite for a ‘throat slit’ (killing Bin Ladin), not a war footing.” With no apparent sense of the lethal irony present, Bush told the commissioners, “A president can’t force preemptive war without a cause. The country didn’t like war. ‘I don’t like it either,’ the President said.”

According to the document, the commissioners discussed 9/11 “conspiracy theories” with Bush, and the president said he had seen some, including ones that “were worse than anything he had seen coming out of even the John Birch Society in Midland, Texas.” Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste told Bush that the commission “wanted to deal with as many of these conspiracy themes as possible. Their goal was to make the country safer.”

The post U.S. Government Quietly Declassifies Post-9/11 Interview With Bush and Cheney appeared first on The Intercept.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now surpassed 50 days of sustained mass death and destruction. Despite several rounds of negotiations over the past seven weeks, the war continues to intensify. Russian President Vladimir Putin remains defiant and has indicated that the brutal military campaign will continue unabated. On Tuesday, Putin said negotiations had hit a “dead end” and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia will not pause its military operations during future peace talks. U.S. President Joe Biden announced this week yet another allocation of $800 million dollars in “more sophisticated and heavier-duty weaponry” than previous transfers to the Ukrainian side. Meanwhile, NATO appears set to expand further, with both Finland and Sweden indicating they are actively considering joining the alliance. Germany and other European countries are publicly committing to buying and selling more weapons and spending more on defense. NATO is raising the prospect of expanding its permanent military presence in Europe, and Washington is reasserting its political dominance over Europe on security matters.

On Sunday, in an interview on NBC, national security adviser Jake Sullivan cast the war not just as a defense of Ukraine but also an opportunity to deliver significant blows to the stability of the Russian state. “At the end of the day, what we want to see is a free and independent Ukraine, a weakened and isolated Russia, and a stronger, more unified, more determined West,” he said. “We believe that all three of those objectives are in sight, can be accomplished.”

As Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russian forces of heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including massacres of large numbers of civilians, Putin’s government and media apparatus is waging an all-out campaign to denounce the allegations as lies and fake news.

Biden has officially accused Putin of war crimes and suggested he should face a “war crime trial.” Russia, like the U.S., has steadfastly refused to ratify the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, so it is unclear how or where the administration believes such a trial would take place.

This week, renowned dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky joined me for a wide-ranging discussion on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, holding the powerful accountable, the role of media and propaganda in war, and what Chomsky believes is necessary to end the bloodshed in Ukraine.

Jeremy Scahill: Thank you very much for joining us here at The Intercept for this discussion with Professor Noam Chomsky. 

We’re going to be discussing today, the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine, the horrors that we’ve seen coming out of Ukraine, the bloodshed, the massacres, the killings. 

But also we are witnessing a major assertion of power by the United States in Europe, calls for expanding U.S. militarism in Europe, European governments pledging to spend more money on weapons systems and to increase their activities as arms brokers. The United States, at present, is the largest weapons dealer in the world. 

At the same time, our guests Noam Chomsky says that this was an act of aggression, state-sponsored act of aggression, that belongs in the history books alongside the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as the 1939 invasion of Poland by both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. 

I want to welcome Professor Noam Chomsky to this forum here on The Intercept. Noam, thank you very much for being with us. 

Noam Chomsky: Pleased to be with you.

JS: I want to start because there’s been a lot of discussion on the left in the United States among anti-war activists on how to make sense of what a just response would look like to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and the mass killing that we are seeing. We can take time to talk about the broader historical context, and you’ve been discussing this a lot in other interviews, but I want to just start by asking you, is there any aspect of the U.S., NATO, and European Union response to this invasion that you believe is just: the weapons transfers to Ukraine, the sweeping economic sanctions and attempts to entirely isolate not only Russia and Putin, but ordinary Russians? Is there any aspect of the government response to this by the U.S., NATO or the European Union that you agree with?

NC: I think that support for Ukraine’s effort to defend itself is legitimate. If it is, of course, it has to be carefully scaled, so that it actually improves their situation and doesn’t escalate the conflict, to lead to destruction of Ukraine and possibly beyond sanctions against the aggressor, or appropriate just as sanctions against Washington would have been appropriate when it invaded Iraq, or Afghanistan, or many other cases. Of course, that’s unthinkable given U.S. power and, in fact, the first few times it has been done — the one time it has been done — the U.S. simply shrugged its shoulders and escalated the conflict. That was in Nicaragua ,when the U.S. was brought to the World Court, condemned for unlawful use of force or to pay reparations, responded by escalating the conflict. So it’s unthinkable in the case of the U.S., but it would be appropriate. 

However, I still think it’s not quite the right question. The right question is: What is the best thing to do to save Ukraine from a grim fate, from further destruction? And that’s to move towards a negotiated settlement. 

There are some simple facts that aren’t really controversial. There are two ways for a war to end: One way is for one side or the other to be basically destroyed. And the Russians are not going to be destroyed. So that means one way is for Ukraine to be destroyed. 

The other way is some negotiated settlement. If there’s a third way, no one’s ever figured it out. So what we should be doing is devoting all the things you mentioned, if properly shaped, but primarily moving towards a possible negotiated settlement that will save Ukrainians from further disaster. That should be the prime focus. 

That requires that we can’t look into the minds of Vladimir Putin and the small clique around him; we can speculate, but can’t do much about it. We can, however, look at the United States and we can see that our explicit policy — explicit — is rejection of any form of negotiations. The explicit policy goes way back, but it was given a definitive form in September 2021 in the September 1 joint policy statement that was then reiterated and expanded in the November 10 charter of agreement. 

And if you look at what it says, it basically says no negotiations. What it says is it calls for Ukraine to move towards what they called an enhanced program for entering NATO, which kills negotiations; — this is before the invasion notice — an increase in the dispatch of advanced weapons to Ukraine, more military training, the joint military exercises, weapons placed on the border. We can’t be sure, but it’s possible that these strong statements may have been a factor in leading Putin and his circle to move from warning to direct invasion. We don’t know. But as long as that policy is guiding the United States, it’s basically saying, to quote Ambassador Chas Freeman, it’s saying: Let’s fight to the last Ukrainian. [That’s] basically, what it amounts to. 

So the questions you raised are important, interesting, just what is the appropriate kind of military aid to give Ukrainians defending themselves enough to defend themselves, but not to lead to an escalation that will just simply lead to massive destruction? And what kinds of sanctions or other actions could be effective in deterring the aggressors? Those are all important, but they pale into insignificance in comparison with the primary need to move towards a negotiated settlement, which is the only alternative to destruction of Ukraine, which of course, Russia is capable of carrying out.

JS: You know, it’s interesting because Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been really lionized, particularly in the U.S. and Western European media. And he’s become a kind of caricature, with these grand, sweeping historical comparisons. And often the quotes from him are intended to give the appearance of this defiant leader who is going to fight to the end. But when you read between the lines, and you read what Ukrainian negotiators are saying, when you read what Zelenskyy says when pressed on conditions for peace, he seems to be extremely aware of the factors that you’re citing, that this has to end in a negotiation. 

And I want to ask you about the role of the U.S. and European media in perpetuating this mythology around Zelenskyy, and the way in which it seems to kind of undermine the seriousness of the negotiators of Ukraine or of Zelenskyy when he is talking in a nuanced manner. It seems that there’s this intent to kind of create a caricature rather than actually listening to the conditions that Ukraine is stating it can live with.

NC: Yes, you’re absolutely right. If you look at the media coverage, Zelenskyy’s very clear, explicit, serious statements about what could be a political settlement — crucially, neutralization of Ukraine — those have been literally suppressed for a long period, then sidelined in favor of heroic, Winston Churchill impersonations by Congressman, others casting Zelenskyy in that mold. 

So, yes, of course. He’s made it pretty clear that he cares about whether Ukraine survives, whether Ukrainians survive, and has therefore put forth a series of reasonable proposals that could well be the basis for negotiation. 

We should bear in mind that the nature of a political settlement, the general nature of it, has been pretty clear on all sides for quite some time. In fact, if the U.S. had been willing to consider them, there might not have been an invasion at all. 

Before the invasion, the U.S. basically had two choices: One was to pursue its official stance, which I just reviewed, which makes the negotiations impossible and may have led to war; the other possibility was to pursue the options that were available. To an extent, they’re still somewhat available, attenuated by the war, but the basic terms are pretty clear. 

Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister announced at the beginning of the invasion that Russia had two main goals — two main goals. Neutralization of Ukraine and demilitarization. Demilitarization doesn’t mean getting rid of all your arms. It means getting rid of heavy weapons connected to the interaction with NATO aimed at Russia. What his terms meant basically was to turn Ukraine into something like Mexico. So Mexico is a sovereign state that can choose its own way in the world, no limitations, but it can’t join a Chinese-run military alliances in placing advanced weapons, Chinese weapons, on the U.S. border, carrying out joint military operations with the People’s Liberation Army, getting training and advanced weapons from Chinese instructors and so on. In fact, that’s so inconceivable that nobody even dares to talk about it. I mean, if any hint of anything like that happened, we know what the next step would be — no need to talk about it. So it’s just inconceivable. 

And basically, Lavrov’s proposals could plausibly be interpreted as saying: Let’s turn Ukraine into Mexico. Well, that was an option that could have been pursued. Instead, the U.S. preferred to do what I just described as inconceivable for Mexico. 

Now, that’s not the whole story. There are other issues. One issue is Crimea. The fact of the matter is Crimea is off the table. We may not like it. Crimeans apparently do like it. But the U.S. says: We’re never going to concede it. Well, that is the basis for permanent conflict. Zelenskyy has sensibly said: Let’s put that off for further discussion. That makes sense. 

Another issue is the Donbas region. That’s been a region of extreme violence for eight years on both sides: Ukrainian shelling, Russian shelling, land mines all over the place, lots of violence. There are OSCE observers, European observers on the ground who give regular reports. You can read them, they’re public. They don’t try to assess the source of the violence — that’s not their mission — but they talk about its radical increase. According to them, if my memory is correct, about 15,000 people or something in that neighborhood may have been killed in the conflict over the last eight years since the Maidan Uprising. 

Well, something has to be done about Donbas, the proper reaction, which maybe the Russians would accept, would be a referendum, an internationally supervised referendum to see what the people of the region want. One possibility, which was available before the invasion, was implementation of the Minsk II agreements, which provided for some form of autonomy in the region within a broader Ukrainian Federation, something like maybe Switzerland or Belgium or other places where there are federal structures — conflict, but confined within federal structures. That would have been a possibility. Whether it could have worked, there’s only one way to find out: to try. The U.S. refused to try; instead, insisted on a super-militant position, official position, which, as far as I know, the press has yet to report. You can tell me if I’m wrong, but I have never seen one reference anywhere in the mainstream press. Occasionally, we at the margins; any reference to the official U.S. position of September 1, 2021, the reiteration or expansion of it in November in the charter. 

Actually I saw one reference to it in the American Conservative, conservative journal, which did refer to it. And, of course, on the left people have talked about it. But the U.S. insisted on that position, which the alternative would have been to pursue the opposite, the option of saying: OK, your main goals are neutralization and demilitarization, meaning Mexico-style arrangement, let’s pursue that. With regard to Crimea, let’s accept Zelenskyy’s sensible position that let’s delay it, we can’t deal with it now. With regard to the Donbas region, work towards some kind of framework with autonomy, based on the opinions of the people who live there, which can be determined by an internationally supervised referendum. Would the Russians agree? We don’t know. Would the United States agree? We don’t know. All we know is they’re rejecting it, officially. Could they be pressed to accept it? I don’t know. We can try. That’s the one thing we can hope to do. 

I mean, there is a sort of a guiding principle that we should be keeping in mind, no matter what the issue, the most important question is: What can we do about it? Not: What can somebody else do about it? That’s worth talking about. But from the most elementary point of view, the major question is, what can we do about it? And we can, in principle, at least do a lot about U.S. policy, less about other things. So I think that’s where the focus of our attention and energy should be.

JS: I want to ask you about some of the statements that Biden administration officials have made in recent days. On the Sunday talk shows this past weekend, you had the national security adviser and the Secretary of State both laying out what was almost an overt war plan for seeking to fundamentally weaken the Russian state and talking about the war in Ukraine as helping to achieve a goal of a severely weakened Russia. 

To what extent are U.S. actions that we’re witnessing now in Ukraine, ultimately aimed at bringing down the government, in Moscow, of Vladimir Putin? Yes, there was the kerfuffle over Biden talking about the this-guy’s-got-to-go quote. But the actions are playing out in full public view. And I think a lot of people put too much weight on a particular clip of Joe Biden, though he may have intentionally said it that way. It’s hard to tell right now with him whether he means to say something or not. But setting that aside, it does seem that a major aspect of the U.S. position right now is that this is a grand opportunity to — they smell the blood of Putin in the water, I guess, is what I’m saying now.

NC: Yes, I think the actions indicate that. But remember, there’s something along with action — namely inaction. What is the United States not doing? Well, what it’s not doing is rescinding the policies that I described, maybe the American press doesn’t let Americans know about them, but you can be sure that Russian intelligence reads what is on the official White House website, obviously. So maybe Americans can be kept in the dark, but the Russians read and know about it. And they know that one form of inaction is not to change that. 

The other form of inaction is not to move to participate in negotiations. Now, there are two countries that could, because of their power, facilitate a diplomatic settlement — I don’t say bring about, but facilitate, make it more likely. One of them is China; the other is the United States. China is being rightly criticized for a refusal to take this step; criticism of the United States is not allowed, so the United States is not being criticized for its failure to take this step and, furthermore, its actions, which makes this step more remote, like the statements you quote on the Sunday talk shows. 

Just imagine how they reach Putin and his circle, what they’re saying, what they interpret as meaning is: Nothing you can do. Go ahead and destroy Ukraine as much as you like. There’s nothing you can do, because you’re going to be out. We’re going to ensure that you have no future. So therefore, you might as well go for broke. 

That’s what the heroic pronouncements on the Sunday talk show mean. It may feel like, again, Winston Churchill impersonations, very exciting. But what they translate into is: Destroy Ukraine. That’s the translation. Inaction, in refusal to withdraw the policy positions that the Russians certainly are fully aware of, even if Americans are kept in the dark, one is to withdraw those. Second is: Do what we blame China for not doing. Join in efforts to facilitate a diplomatic settlement and stop telling the Russians: There’s no way out; you might as well go for broke; your backs are against the wall. 

Those are things that could be done.

JS: Now, I want to ask you about media coverage. And first, I just want to say that we have already seen a horrifying number of journalists killed in Ukraine. In fact, a friend of mine, the filmmaker Brent Renaud, was one of the first journalists killed in Ukraine. And it’s horrifying to witness media workers, some of whom appear to have been directly targeted for killing. So I guess I just want to say at the onset that I think we’re seeing some incredibly brave and vital journalism coming out of Ukraine, and much of it is being done by Ukrainian reporters. And that statement just needs to stand on its own. 

But back in the studios in Washington, and Berlin, and London, there’s a different form of media activism happening. And it really seems as though many journalists see their role now working for powerful, particularly broadcast media outlets, as supporting the position of the United States and NATO and being actual propagandists for a particular outcome and course of action. And this is happening at the same time that the Biden administration is now admitting that it has been manipulating the media by putting out unverified intelligence and pushing claims about plans to use chemical weapons and other actions. 

And I just want to read to you, Noam, from an NBC News report recently, it said: “It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world. U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine. President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions […] Multiple U.S. officials acknowledged that the U.S. has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and at other times, as an official put it, the U.S. is just ‘trying to get inside Putin’s head.’”

Now this kind of activity from the U.S. government is not new. What I think is extraordinary or interesting is that they’re now not only owning it publicly, but they are almost celebrating that they’re able to use their own news media and powerful journalists to spread it as part of their war effort.

NC: As you say, it’s by no means new. You can trace it far back in a concentrated, organized form back to World War I, when the British established a Ministry of Information. We know what that means. The goal of the Ministry of Information was to put up horror stories about German war crimes which would induce Americans to get into the war, Woodrow Wilson — and it worked. If you read U.S. liberal intellectuals, they were taken. They accepted it. They said: Yes, we have to stop these horrible crimes that the British Ministry of Information is concocting in order to mislead us.

President Wilson set up his own ministry of public information, meaning lies to the public, to try to encourage Americans to hate everything German. So the Boston Symphony Orchestra wouldn’t play Beethoven, for example. 

Then it goes on. Reagan had what’s called an Office of Public Diplomacy, meaning an office to lie to the public and the media about what we’re doing. But it’s not a hard task for the government. 

And the reason was actually stated, rather clearly, by the public relations officer of the United Fruit Company, back in 1954, when the U.S. was moving to overthrow the democratic government of Guatemala and install a vicious, brutal dictatorship, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people with U.S. support ever since. He was asked by the media: What about the United Fruit Company efforts to try to convince journalists to support this? He said: Yes, we did it. But you have to remember how eager they were for the experience. 

OK? Wasn’t hard. They wanted it. We fed them these lies. They were delighted because they wanted to support the state and its violence and terror. 

Now, that’s not the journalists on the ground. There is a split, as you describe. It’s true of every war. So in Nicaragua, in the Central American wars of the 1980s, there were great reporters on the ground. The Vietnam War, same thing, doing serious, courageous work — many suffering for it. You get up to the newsrooms; it looks totally different. That’s a fact about the media. 

And we don’t have to look far back. You can take a look at The New York Times. It’s the best newspaper in the world, which is not a high bar. Its main thinker, a big thinker, who writes serious articles, had an article, an op-ed a day or two ago, saying: How can we deal with war criminals? What can we do? We’re stuck. There’s this war criminal running Russia. How can we possibly deal with him? 

The interesting thing about that article is not so much that it appeared. You expect that kind of stuff. It’s that it didn’t elicit ridicule. In fact, there was no comment on it. We don’t know how to deal with war criminals? Sure, we do. In fact, we had a clear exhibition of it just a couple of days ago. One of the leading war criminals in the United States is the man who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq; can’t go far beyond that as being a war criminal. And, in fact, on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, there was one interview in the press. To its credit, The Washington Post did interview him in the Style section. The interview is worth reading: It’s about this lovable, goofy grandpa playing with his grandchildren; happy family, showing off the portraits he painted of great people he had met. 

So we know how to deal with war criminals. What’s the problem? We deal with them very easily. Nevertheless, this column could appear in the world’s greatest newspaper, which is interesting enough, and not elicit a word of comment, which is much more interesting. 

Well, that tells you what you’re talking about, as Tom McCann said, the United Fruit Company PR guy: They’re eager for the experience. 

It doesn’t take much propaganda. So the government can work hard with its cognitive control systems. But it’s pushing an open door at the editorial level. And this has been true as far back as you want to go, and it still is.

JS: Charlie Savage, who is not an op-ed writer, but is an excellent national security reporter for The New York Times, also had a piece that dealt with some of this this week in The New York Times. And it was an analytical piece, looking at the challenge that the U.S. has made for itself because of its grand hypocrisy on issues of international criminal court. 

And I just want to summarize a little bit for people that maybe don’t follow this the way that you do or I do. But the short of it is that the United States has consistently been adamantly and militantly opposed to any international judicial body that would have jurisdiction over its own actions. And in fact, in 2002, George W. Bush signed into law a bipartisan piece of legislation that came to be known as the Hague Invasion Act. And people can go online and read the bill themselves, and it’s still the law of the land in the United States, but one of the clauses of that law states that the U.S. military can be authorized to literally conduct a military operation in the Netherlands to liberate any U.S. personnel who are brought there on war crimes charges or under war crimes investigation. That’s why it’s called, by many activists and civil libertarians, the Hague Invasion Act. 

At the same time, Joe Biden himself has said Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, and has called for a war crimes trial while the United States itself has only supported these ad hoc tribunals for countries like Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, and, like Russia, the United States refuses to ratify the treaty that established the International Criminal Court. 

I’m sure, Noam, that you and I both agree that there are massive war crimes being conducted right now in Ukraine — certainly Russia is the dominant military power and I wouldn’t be surprised for one second if a huge percentage of the war crimes being committed are being done by Russia. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t war crimes being committed by Ukraine. We already have video evidence of this, of both Ukraine and Russia. But I want to be clear here; I believe that Russia is committing systemic war crimes in Ukraine. But when you have the United States undermining the International Criminal Court, refusing to ratify the treaty, how can Joe Biden call for a war crimes trial, when Dick Cheney and George Bush are walking around as free men, not to mention Henry Kissinger? And when the U.S. itself won’t accept that that court should have jurisdiction equally over all powers in the world?

NC: Well, two questions, points of fact: You’re quite right, that the overwhelming mass of the war crimes, the ones that we should be considering, are carried out by the Russians. That’s not in dispute. And they are major war crimes. It’s also true that the United States totally blocked the ICC. But notice there’s nothing new about that. There’s even a stronger case, which has been deep-sixed. The United States is the only country to have rejected a judgment of the International Criminal Court — of the World Court. They used to have two companions, Hoxha of Albania and Qaddafi in Libya. But they are gone. So now the U.S. stands in splendid isolation in having rejected the judgment of the World Court, that was in 1986, dealt with one of Washington’s minor crimes, the war against Nicaragua. The court condemned the United States for — the words were — “unlawful use of force,” meaning international terrorism, ordered the U.S. to desist and pay substantial reparations. 

Well, there was a reaction by the Reagan administration and Congress: Escalate the crimes. That was the reaction. There was a reaction in the press: The New York Times editorial saying the court decision is irrelevant, because the court is a hostile forum. Why is it a hostile forum? Because it dares to accuse the United States of crimes. So that takes care of that. So the reaction is to escalate the crimes. 

Nicaragua actually sponsored first a Security Council resolution, which didn’t mention the United States, just called on all states to observe international law; the U.S. vetoed it. It was on record as saying to the Security Council, states should not observe international law. It then went to the General Assembly who overwhelmingly approved a similar resolution. U.S. opposed, Israel opposed, two states that should not observe international law. Well, all of that, that’s not part of history as far as the United States is concerned. That’s the kind of history, according to Republicans, you shouldn’t teach because it’s divisive, makes people feel bad. You shouldn’t teach it. But you don’t have to tell anyone because it’s not taught. And it’s not remembered — virtually no one remembers it. 

And it goes beyond that. The United States, in fact, when the major treaties, like the Organization of American States treaty, were signed back in the 40s, the United States added reservations, saying basically not applicable to the United States. In fact, the United States very rarely signs any conventions — very rarely. I mean ratifies — sometimes it signs. And when it does ratify them, they are with reservations, excluding the United States. 

That even includes the Genocide Convention. There is a Genocide Convention. The United States finally ratified it after, I think, about 40 years, but with a reservation saying inapplicable to the United States. We are entitled to commit genocide. That came to the international tribunals: Yugoslavia tribunal, or maybe it was the World Court. I don’t remember. Yugoslavia charged NATO with crimes in its attack on Serbia. The NATO powers agreed to enter into the details of the court operations. The U.S. refused. And it did on grounds that Yugoslavia had mentioned genocide. And the United States is self-immune, immunized from the charge of genocide. And the court accepted that correctly. Countries are subject to jurisdiction only if they accept it. Well, that’s us. 

We can go on. We’re a rogue state, the leading rogue state by a huge dimension — nobody’s even close. And yet we can call for war crimes trials of others, without batting an eyelash. We can even have columns by the major columnist, most respected columnist, saying: How can we deal with a war criminal? 

It’s interesting to look at the reaction to all of this in the more civilized part of the world, the global south. They look at it; they condemn the invasion, say it’s a horrible crime. But the basic response is: What’s new? What’s the fuss about? We’ve been subjected to this from you from as far back as it goes, Biden calls Putin a war criminal; yeah, takes one to know one. It’s the basic reaction. 

You can see it simply by looking at the sanctions map. The United States doesn’t understand why most of the world doesn’t join in sanctions. Which countries join in sanctions? Take a look. The map is revealing. The English-speaking countries, Europe, and those who apartheid South Africa called honorary whites: Japan, with a couple of its former colonies. That’s it. The rest of the world says: Yeah, terrible, but what’s new? What’s the fuss about? Why should we get involved in your hypocrisy? 

The U.S. can’t understand that. How can they fail to condemn the crimes the way we do? Well, they do condemn the crimes the way we do, but they go a step beyond which we don’t — namely, what I just described? Well, that means there’s a lot of work to do in the United States simply to raise the level of civilization to where we can see the world, the way the traditional victims see it. If we can rise to that level, we can act in a much more constructive way with regard to Ukraine as well.

JS: What do you see — or how would you analyze right now, the posture of the United States toward India and China, in particular? I mean, two massive countries representing a large portion of the world’s population, relative to the size of the United States for certain, but the economic pressure that the United States is putting on both India and China right now, what are the consequences of the U.S. posture toward both India and China right now?

NC: Well, it’s different. For one thing the United States is quite supportive of the Indian government. India has a neo-fascist government. The Modi government is working hard to destroy Indian democracy, turn India into a racist, Hindu kleptocracy, attack Muslims, conquer Kashmir — not a word about that. The United States supports all that. It’s very supportive. It’s a close ally, a close ally of Israel — our kind of guy, in other words, so no problem. 

And the problem with India is it doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t go as far as we want it to, to join in the assault against Russia. It is playing a neutral game like all of the Global South saying: Yeah, it’s a crime, but we’re not going to get involved in your game. 

And the other thing is, India is participating, but not as actively as the U.S. would like in its policy of what the Biden administration calls “encircling China.” One of our major policy, Russia’s kind of a sideline, but the major policy is to encircle China — containment is out of fashion, so encircle China — with sentinel states, that’s the term that’s used, armed to the teeth with massive offensive capacity to protect ourselves from what’s called the threat of China. That’s a ring of states from South Korea, Japan, Australia, India — except India is not joining actively enough — which we will provide, the Biden administration has just recently announced providing advanced precision missiles aimed at China. 

In the case of Australia, the United States, along with Britain, its puppy dog, is providing Australia with advanced nuclear submarines, advertised as able to get into Chinese ports without being detected and to destroy the Chinese fleet in two or three days. China has an ancient prehistoric fleet there — they don’t even have nuclear submarines — old fashioned diesel submarines. 

Meanwhile, the United States is enhancing its own capacity to defend ourselves. So far, we have Trident nuclear submarines, which are able to, each one, one submarine, can destroy almost 200 cities anywhere in the world with a nuclear strike. But that’s not enough. We’re now moving to more advanced, I think it’s called Virginia-class submarines, which will be far more destructive. And that’s our policy towards China. 

We also have an economic policy. The United States just passed a bipartisan, two-party supported act to improve the U.S. technology, science infrastructure, not because it would be good for the United States — we couldn’t consider that — but because it would compete with China. It’s the compete-with-China bill. So if we want to have better science and technology, it is because we have to beat down China, make sure China doesn’t get ahead of us. Let’s not work with China, to deal with truly existential problems like global warming, or less serious but severe problems, like pandemics and nuclear weapons. Let’s compete with them and make sure we can beat them down — that’s what’s important — and get ahead of them. 

It’s a pathology. You can’t imagine anything more lunatic. Incidentally: What is the China threat? It’s not that China’s got a very brutal, harsh government. But the U.S. never cares about things like that. Deals with them easily. The China threat, there’s an interesting article about it by an Australian statesman, well-known international statesman, former prime minister, Paul Keating, who reviews the various elements of the China threat, and concludes, finally, that the China threat is that China exists. And he’s correct. China exists and does not follow U.S. orders. That’s no good. You have to follow U.S. orders. If you don’t, you’re in trouble. 

Well, most countries do. Europe does. Europe despises U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran, strongly opposes them, but it observes them because you don’t step on the toes of the godfather. So they observe U.S. sanctions. China doesn’t. China’s engaged in what the State Department once called “successful defiance” of U.S. policies. That was 1960s when the State Department was explaining why we have to torture Cuba, carry out a terrorist war against it, almost leading to nuclear war, impose highly destructive sanctions — we’re still at it after 60 years, opposed by the entire world. Look at the votes in the General Assembly 184-2, U.S. and Israel. We have to do it as the liberal state department explained in the 1960s because of Cuba’s successful defiance of U.S. policies going back to 1823. 

The Monroe Doctrine, which stated the U.S. determination to dominate the hemisphere — [we] weren’t strong enough to do it at the time, but that’s the policy. And Cuba is defying it successfully. That’s no good. 

China’s not Cuba, it’s much bigger. It’s successfully defying U.S. policies. So no matter how brutal it is, who cares? We support other brutal states all the time, but not successful defiance of U.S. policies. So therefore, we have to encircle China, with sentinel states, with advanced weapons aimed at China, which we have to maintain and upgrade, and ensure that we overwhelm anything in China’s vicinity. That’s part of our official policy. It was formulated by the Trump administration, Jim Mattis, in 2018, taken over by Biden. We have to be able to fight and win two wars with China and Russia.

I mean, that’s beyond insanity. The war with either China or Russia means: Nice knowing you, goodbye civilization, we’re done. But we have to be able to win and fight two of them. And now with Biden, we have to expand it to encircling China with sentinel states to which we provide more advanced weapons, while we upgrade our huge destructive capacity. Like we don’t want those weak nuclear submarines which can destroy 200 cities. That’s sissy stuff. Let’s go beyond. 

And then Putin gave the United States a tremendous gift. The war in Ukraine was criminal, but also from his point of view, utterly stupid. He gave the United States the fondest wish; it could have handed Europe to the United States on a golden platter. 

I mean, throughout the whole Cold War, one of the major issues in international affairs was whether Europe would become an independent force in international affairs, what was called a third force, maybe along the lines that Charles de Gaulle outlined, or that Gorbachev outlined when the Soviet Union collapsed; common European home, no military alliances, cooperation between Europe and Russia, which had become integrated into peaceful commercial blood. That’s one option. 

The other option is what’s called the Atlanticist program, implemented by NATO. The United States calls the shots and you obey, that’s the Atlanticist program. Of course, the U.S. has always supported that one, and has always won. Now Putin solved it for the United States. He said: OK. You get Europe as a subordinate. Europe goes ahead and arms itself to the teeth to protect itself from an army, which Europe says gleefully, is incapable of conquering cities 20 miles from its border. So therefore, we have to arm ourselves to the teeth to defend ourselves from the onslaught of this extraordinarily powerful force against NATO. I mean, if anybody’s observing this from outer space, they’d be cracking up in laughter. But not in the offices of Lockheed Martin. They think it’s terrific. Even better in the offices of Exxon Mobil. 

That’s the interesting part. There were some hopes, not major hopes, but some hopes of dealing with a climate crisis that is gonna destroy organized human life on Earth. Not tomorrow, but in the process of doing it. Current, most plausible projections are three degrees Centigrade increase over pre-industrial levels by 20 by the end of the century. That’s catastrophic. I mean, doesn’t mean everybody dies, but it’s a total catastrophe. Well, there were moves to stop that. Now they’ve been reversed.

You look at the stuff that’s coming out of the energy corporations, they’re euphoric. First, we’ve got all these annoying environmentalists out of our hair. They don’t bother us anymore. In fact, now we’re being loved for saving civilization. And that’s not enough. They say: We want to be “hugged” — their word — we want to be hugged by saving civilization, by rapidly expanding the production of fossil fuels, which will destroy everything, but put more cash in our pockets during the period that remains. That’s what somebody from outer space would be looking at. That’s us, OK?

JS: I know, Noam, we have to wrap up. But I do want to note that just in recent days we’ve heard now that the White House is proposing a record-shattering military budget, in excess of $813 billion. And you know, this would be a much longer conversation if we kept it going. But it’s really a number of very significant things that have happened over the course of this war, from the perspective of the U.S. and NATO, among them Germany lifting its cap on the amount of its GDP that it will spend on defense, the pipeline of weapons. And many European countries have been very hesitant to get super-involved with transferring weapons systems and now there’s discussion of even more permanent NATO bases. 

And I think part of what you’re getting at, which I think is important for people to understand, is that Vladimir Putin, for whatever reasons he made the decision to do this in Ukraine, ultimately has created conditions that the U.S. has long wished were there for the United States to assert total dominance over European decision-making on issues of militarism. It also is an enormous boondoggle for the war industry. And I think that it’s hard to — go ahead.

NC: And the fossil fuel industry.

JS: And the fossil fuel industry. And I think that as we watch the horrors of human destruction and mass murder happening in Ukraine, we also must find a way to think of the long-term consequences of the actions of our own government. And unfortunately, when you raise these issues, when I raised them, when others do right now, in the U.S. media contexts, there is this Neo McCarthyite response, where to question the dominant narrative, or to question the motives of those in power, is now treated as an act of treason, or it’s traitorous or you are a Putin stooge or are being paid in rubles. This is a very dangerous trend that we’re witnessing where to question the state now is being very publicly and consistently equated with being a traitor.

NC: That’s an old story. 

JS: It’s an old story, but also with social media, and the fact that so many people now could have their comments spread around, and the cohesion of messaging that we’re seeing — it is an old story, Noam, of course, and you’ve written multiple books about this very phenomenon. What I’m getting at is that it now is just permeating every aspect of our culture, where to question those in power, which is the job of journalists, which is the job of thinking, responsible people in a democratic society, those things are being attacked as acts of treason, basically.

NC: As always has been the case. We have a dramatic example of it right in front of us: Julian Assange. A perfect example of a journalist who did the job of providing the public with information that the government wants suppressed. Information, some of it about U.S. crimes but other things. So he’s been subjected to years of torture — torture — that’s the U.N. Repertory torture decision, now being held in a high-security prison, subjected to the possibility of extradition to the United States where he’ll be severely punished for daring to do what a journalist is supposed to do. 

Now take a look at the way the media are reacting to this. First of all, they used everything WikiLeaks exposed, happily used it, made money out of it, improved their reputations. Are they supporting Assange, and this attack on the person who performed the honorable duty of a journalist and is now being tortured? Not that I’ve seen. They’re not supporting it. We’ll use what he did, but then we’ll join the jackals who are snapping at his feet. OK? That’s now. It goes far back. 

You go back to 1968, the peak of the war in Vietnam, when real mass popular popular opinion was developing. When McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser for Kennedy and Johnson wrote a very interesting article in Foreign Affairs, a main establishment journal, in which he said: Well, there are legitimate criticisms of some of what we’ve done in Vietnam, like we made tactical errors, we should have done things a little differently. And then he said, there are also the wild men in the wings, who question our policies beyond tactical decisions — terrible people. We’re a democratic country, so we don’t kill them. But you got to get rid of these wild men in the wings — [that’s] 1968. 

You go to 1981: U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick devises the notion of moral equivalence. She said: If you dare to criticize the United States, you’re guilty of moral equivalence. You’re saying we’re just like Stalin and Hitler. So you can’t talk about the United States. 

There’s another term that’s used now. It’s: whataboutism. If you talk about what the U.S. is doing right now, it’s whataboutism, you can’t do that. You’ve got to adhere firmly to the party line, strictly to the party line. We don’t have the kind of force that Hitler and Stalin had. But we can use obedience, conformity — a lot of things we’ve been talking about. And you get a sort of similar result — not new. 

And yes, you’re right, it has to be combatted. We have to deal with what’s happening. And that includes what we are now doing to Ukraine, as we’ve discussed, both by inaction and action, we’re fighting to the last Ukrainian to quote Ambassador Freeman again. And it should be legitimate to say that if you care anything about Ukrainians. If you don’t care anything about them, fine, just silence.

JS: On that note, Noam Chomsky, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to be with us and for all of your work. I really appreciate you taking the time this evening.

NC: Good to talk to you.

The post Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill on the Russia-Ukraine War, the Media, Propaganda, and Accountability appeared first on The Intercept.

A destroyed car is seen in a crater on March 28, 2022, from a Russian attack that destroyed a house in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

The White House smells Putin’s blood in the waters of his disastrous invasion. The flow of weapons, the sweeping sanctions, and other acts of economic warfare are ultimately aimed not just at defending Ukraine and making the regime pay for the invasion in the immediate present, but also setting in motion its downfall. “For god’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said during his recent visit to Poland. The White House sought to walk back the line and clarify that it did not constitute a change in policy but was merely an expression of the president’s righteous anger. The kerfuffle over what Biden really meant is less important than the very public actions of the U.S. and its allies.

The war in Ukraine is simultaneously a war of aggression being waged by Putin and part of a larger geopolitical battle between the U.S., NATO, and Russia. “We are engaged in a conflict here. It’s a proxy war with Russia, whether we say so or not,” said Leon Panetta, the former CIA director and defense secretary under Barack Obama. “I think the only way to basically deal with Putin right now is to double down on ourselves, which means to provide as much military aid as necessary.” Speaking to Bloomberg News on March 17, Panetta laid out the U.S. strategy: “Make no mistake about it: Diplomacy is going nowhere unless we have leverage, unless the Ukrainians have leverage, and the way you get leverage is by, frankly, going in and killing Russians. That’s what the Ukrainians have to do. We’ve got to continue the war effort. This is a power game. Putin understands power; he doesn’t really understand diplomacy very much.”

It should not be assumed that the strategies and actions being employed by Washington and its allies in their proxy war against Moscow will always be in the best interest of Ukraine or its people. Likewise, Ukraine’s calls for military support and action from the West — however justifiable and sincere they are — may not be in the best interest of the rest of the world, particularly if they increase the likelihood of nuclear war or World War III. The desire to avoid this scenario by advocating for a negotiated solution to the war that addresses Russia’s stated concerns or its rationale for the invasion is not a capitulation to Putin and it is not appeasement. It is common sense.

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While the fate of Ukraine and the lives of its civilian population are evoked in calls for more escalatory action from the West, it is these very people who will suffer and die in large numbers every day the war drags on. Western media coverage is often crafted to portray only one outcome as acceptable: a decisive Ukrainian victory, in which the government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy emerges from the horrors of the Russian invasion in complete control of all of its territory, including Crimea and the Donbas region. Ukraine, as a free and independent state, should be free to join NATO, and Russia has no legitimacy in questioning the implications of such a move. Advocacy for accepting anything short of this outcome is a victory for Russia and therefore traitorous to even consider.

While this position may feel morally right, particularly when it is bolstered by the ghastly images of human carnage wrought by Russian forces and the pleas of Ukrainians for the world to intervene much more directly, embedded within this mindset is a morally dubious principle: Ukrainians should bear the human cost not just of the defense of their nation, but also of the larger-scale agendas of the U.S. and other Western governments. In her recent essay for The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, a prominent Russia hawk, argued that now is the time for the U.S. and its allies to embrace a new Cold War. “As long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others,” she wrote. “There is no natural liberal world order, and there are no rules without someone to enforce them.”

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The routine belligerence exhibited by countless politicians, pundits, and media figures about taking the fight to Putin in Ukraine is largely chickenhawkery. “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is today’s Churchill, and President Biden is today’s FDR,” wrote the notorious war promoter Max Boot in the Washington Post. “A Russian defeat,” Boot argued, “is essential to save Ukraine and safeguard the liberal international order. The Ukrainians are willing to fight on despite their heartbreaking losses. We just need to give them the tools to finish the job.” Yet when you listen to the fine details of Ukraine’s own negotiators and leaders, it’s clear that they understand that the war does not end with the swift annihilation of Putin, the downfall of Russia, or with a clean and complete Ukrainian retention of its territorial sovereignty. That’s why Zelenskyy’s government has acknowledged that the issue of NATO membership, a formalized neutrality status, and an internationally brokered process on the status of Crimea will all be on the table.

There has been much noise about Russia’s recent indications that it was drawing down its military actions in parts of Ukraine, particularly around the capital Kyiv. The U.S. and NATO have acknowledged a partial drawdown but asserted that Russian forces appear to be repositioning, likely for use in the east. Russia has also said as much itself. Moscow’s position is that “the main goals of the first stage of the operation have generally been accomplished.”

There is a peculiar dynamic surrounding the analysis of Putin’s comments on his intentions for Ukraine. He is accused of lying when his remarks undermine the U.S. narrative, but we are told to believe he is absolutely telling the truth when his pugnacious threats bolster the U.S. position. Whether or not Putin intended to seize all of Ukraine and become an imperial occupier, he did seem to believe his invasion could cause the Ukrainian government to collapse and its leaders to flee in fear. That did not happen. Instead, U.S. and NATO-armed Ukrainian forces outside Kyiv have fought the Russian troops ferociously and inflicted significant losses against them on the battlefield. At the same time, by opening multiple fronts, Moscow forced Ukraine to defend vital territory, including its capital. This strategy exacted a tremendous human toll on the Russian military, but it did take some heat off Russian forces in the Donbas territories in the east, which Putin has cited as his territorial priority in the operation.

But the question of Putin’s original intent — to take Kyiv or to use that threat as a strategy to spread Ukraine’s defenses thin — is now largely irrelevant except in the rhetorical battlespace focused on Russian weakness, incompetence, or failure.

The most contentious issue in the negotiations to end the war will likely have little to do with NATO membership. Zelenskyy has already conceded that to end the war Ukraine will have to drop that ambition and adopt a neutral and nonaligned status, though he does want to continue the pursuit of joining the European Union. Russia will certainly oppose any attempts for Kyiv to win a backdoor “Article 5” status that could trigger defense of Ukraine by Western powers in cases of future military actions by Moscow. Ukraine has suggested that it would also want China and Turkey to be a part of such a guarantee, not just adversaries of Russia. There are indications that the U.S. doesn’t think the proposal is viable, and Britain’s deputy prime minister bluntly stated, “Ukraine is not a NATO member,” adding, “We’re not going to engage Russia in direct military confrontation.”

Based on the reports out of the recent negotiations in Turkey, it seems that the most incendiary questions will revolve around the breakaway republics in the Donbas region. Ukraine has effectively said it wants a return to the pre-invasion status quo, which would mean erasing the Putin-recognized declarations of independence from Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia, which is currently expanding its control over the Donbas and seizing more territory, is unlikely to agree. This dynamic more than any other could delay or block any meaningful resolution and would be a central focus in a potential summit between Zelenskyy and Putin.

Once there is a brokered agreement, the flow of Western weapons into Ukraine and Russian military support for the separatists will result in a constant state of war footing for many years to come. A cloud portending more fighting and bloodshed will remain hovering over eastern Ukraine. If U.S. and other NATO troops resume their training exercises in Ukraine, as Biden has indicated they should, this means that there will always be a risk of incidents that could quickly escalate.

This six-week war surely has left the war industry jubilant. In Washington, Biden recently proposed what would be the largest U.S. “defense” budget in history, more than $813 billion. Germany and other European countries are publicly committing to buying and selling more weapons and spending more on defense. NATO is raising the prospect of expanding its permanent military presence in Europe and Washington is reasserting its political dominance over Europe on security matters. But despite the image of global unity of cause being promoted by the U.S. and its NATO allies, several large and powerful nations, including China, India, Indonesia, and NATO member Turkey, are not marching to Washington’s drumbeat — not in the proxy-war business and not in the policy of sanctioning and vilifying Russia.

The overt war in Ukraine will have to end at the negotiating table. But the proxy war is escalating and will have consequences that extend far beyond the current battlefield.

The post The U.S. Has Its Own Agenda Against Russia appeared first on The Intercept.

Weapons and other military hardware delivered by the United States military at Boryspil Airport near Kyiv, Ukraine, on Jan. 25, 2022.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The world’s largest arms dealer, the United States, is leading an effort among NATO nations to dramatically increase the flow of weapons to the besieged government in Kyiv. While the Biden administration has resisted calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, a move which could result in an overt hot war between major nuclear powers, the weapons transfers represent a significant escalation of Western involvement.

Despite strong efforts in recent weeks from NATO governments and many large media outlets to minimize or excise the relevant role Western powers played in the years leading up to Russia’s brutal invasion, there has been a sustained proxy war in Ukraine between Moscow and Washington for a decade. Unless the desired outcome is a full-spectrum war between Russia and the U.S.-NATO bloc, Western nations — particularly the U.S. — must ask themselves whether the current course of action is more or less likely to facilitate an end to the horrifying violence being imposed on Ukraine’s civilian population.

Throughout its two terms, the Obama administration resisted providing overt lethal assistance to Ukraine, concerned that such a move by the U.S. would provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, President Barack Obama maintained that stance, though his administration did provide a range of other nonlethal military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, including training. That posture shifted under President Donald Trump, and Washington began a relatively modest flow of weapons shipments. Trump’s attempt to cajole Ukraine into involving itself in his electoral battle with Joe Biden notwithstanding, U.S. military support for Kyiv has ticked steadily upward.

Even before Russia’s invasion, the Biden administration had begun a process of increasing lethal aid. In his first year in office, Biden approved more military aid to Ukraine — some $650 million — than the U.S. had ever provided. On February 26, as a result of Putin’s invasion, the guardrails came off: an “unprecedented” additional $350 million weapons package was pushed through. There is now wide bipartisan support in Washington for an immediate and aggressive $13.5 billion effort to ship American arms and other assistance, including humanitarian aid, to Ukraine. The package will also cover the cost of additional deployments of U.S. military assets and troops to the region. Historically, weapons shipments to Ukraine have taken months to implement. Now they are moving within days.

The U.S. has moved at remarkable speed to deliver the weapons approved by Biden in late February: A range of Javelin antitank missiles, rocket launchers, guns, and ammunition have already made their way onto the battlefield. “The shipment of weapons — which also includes Stinger antiaircraft missiles from U.S. military stockpiles, mostly in Germany — represents the largest single authorized transfer of arms from U.S. military warehouses to another country,” according to the New York Times, citing a Pentagon official.

More than a dozen other NATO countries and several non-NATO European nations have started or expanded their weapons shipments to Ukraine. In a significant move, Germany broke with its long-standing policy of not sending weapons to conflict zones. As part of its initial package, Berlin is moving some 1,500 rocket launchers and Stinger missiles and potentially additional Soviet-era shoulder-fired Strela missiles. The European Union has also broken its own resistance to providing lethal assistance and entered the arms market with a commitment of nearly half a billion dollars in weapons to Ukraine. EU treaties prohibit the use of budgetary money for weapons transfers, so the union tapped funds from its “off-budget” European Peace Facility. “For the first time ever, the EU will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “This is a watershed moment.”

The substantially expanded and expedited Western arms shipments, and increased intelligence support, could prolong large-scale military action. NATO has also said that any Russian attack against the supply lines facilitating the flow of weapons to Ukraine will trigger an invocation of Article 5 of the NATO charter, thus raising the specter of military action against Russia. Moscow, which has already labeled the sweeping sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies a declaration of “economic war,” has warned that nations sending weapons to Ukraine “will be responsible for any consequences of such actions.”

The weapons will not be sufficient to defeat Russia militarily.

The weapons will surely aid Ukrainian forces in waging counterattacks against Moscow’s invasion but will not be sufficient to defeat Russia militarily. Should Moscow succeed in forcibly taking major Ukrainian cities or even in toppling the government, the Western weapons are likely to be used in a protracted armed insurgency and war of attrition that may produce echoes of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The dominant Western media and government narrative about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine requires a total rejection of the legitimacy of any Russian security concerns. Viewing Putin as an unhinged madman coldly acting out of a love of brutality and conquest may be a more satisfying narrative, but it will not bring an end to the war. Any diplomatic or negotiated resolution of the crisis will necessarily entail Ukrainian concessions, so it’s important to understand Moscow’s point of view. In an interview with ABC World News on March 7, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to acknowledge this. “I think [Putin] is capable of stopping the war that he started,” Zelensky told David Muir. “And even if he doesn’t think that he was the one who started, he should know one important thing, a thing that cannot deny, that stopping the war is what he’s capable of.”

It is understandable and reasonable that people across the U.S. and Europe are demanding their governments send more weapons to support Ukraine in resisting the Russian invasion. Without the Western-supplied weapons Ukraine already possessed, it is very likely Russia would be in control of much larger swaths of the country. It is also vital that people advocating such a policy consider whether a sizable increase in U.S. and NATO weapons transfers will prolong the conflict and result in even more civilian death and destruction.

If the Western position is that Russia must publicly admit that it is criminal and wrong, and if such a confession is a precondition to any negotiation, then flooding Ukraine with even more weapons is a logical move — especially if you believe that Putin is insane and wants to bring the world to nuclear war and annihilation if he is not able to seize Ukraine. If, however, the aim is to end the horrors as swiftly as possible, then we require a serious analysis of the impact such large-scale weapons shipments will have on the fate of Ukrainian civilians and the prospects for an end to the invasion.

If the flow of weapons delays a negotiated settlement between Russia, Ukraine, and NATO, then it is hard to see the massive scope of the weapons transfers as a clear positive.

It may be the case that the flow of Western weapons to the Ukrainian forces will so bleed Russia that it pulls out of Ukraine, fatally damaging Putin’s grip on power and saving many lives. In that case, these shipments will be seen as a decisive factor in Ukraine’s defeat of Russia. But if it doesn’t, and the flow of weapons delays a negotiated settlement between Russia, Ukraine, and NATO, then it is hard to see the massive scope of the weapons transfers as a clear positive.

In a thoughtful analysis for Responsible Statecraft, Russia expert Anatol Lieven argued that Ukraine had already achieved a significant victory against Putin. “For it is now obvious that any such pro-Russian authorities imposed by Moscow in Ukraine would lack all support and legitimacy, and could never maintain any kind of stable rule,” Lieven wrote. “To keep them in place would require the permanent presence of Russian forces, permanent Russian casualties and permanent ferocious repression. In short, a Russian forever war.” He argued, “The Ukrainians have in fact achieved what the Finns achieved by their heroic resistance against Soviet invasion. The Finns convinced Stalin that it would be far too difficult to impose a Communist government on Finland. The Ukrainians have convinced sensible members of the Russian establishment — and hopefully, Putin himself — that Russia cannot dominate the whole of Ukraine. The fierce resistance of the Ukrainians should also convince Russia of the utter folly of breaking an agreement and attacking Ukraine again.”

Members of the U.S. Army 173rd Airborne Brigade demonstrate urban warfare techniques as Ukrainian soldiers look on on the second day of the “Rapid Trident” bilateral military exercises between the United States and Ukraine that include troops from a variety of NATO and non-NATO countries on Sept. 16, 2014 near Yavorov, Ukraine.

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The U.S. and NATO are not going to kick countries out of NATO, and Putin knows that, despite his call for an effective return to NATO’s 1997 footprint. NATO is not going to withdraw its forces and weapons from Poland, the Balkans, or the former Soviet territories of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. But Putin clearly believes his demand that Ukraine enshrine neutrality in its laws and commit to staying out of NATO is realistic. In recent days, critics of NATO expansion have pointed to the 2008 observations of Biden’s CIA Director William Burns as particularly relevant on this point. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” Burns noted in a diplomatic cable from Moscow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which he quoted in his 2019 book “The Back Channel: American Diplomacy in a Disordered World.” “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Russia is also demanding that Ukraine recognize the independence of the two breakaway territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, and that Crimea is Russian territory. Since 2014, an estimated 14,000 people — including large numbers of civilians — have been killed in fighting between the government — aided by paramilitaries, including armed neo-Nazi elements — and Russian-backed insurgents, mercenaries, and paramilitaries in the eastern Donbas region. The practical reality now is that Russia appears to be on its way toward consolidating control of those areas. Barring direct NATO intervention, Ukraine would have to sacrifice an immense number of lives and resources in what would almost certainly be a failed military venture to wrestle back even nominal control of these territories.

Despite the absurdity of Putin’s sweeping portrayal of Ukraine as a state run by Nazis, there are murderous fascist elements in Ukraine, including some that have been given official legitimacy within its armed forces. Since 2018, largely because of the work of Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and other progressive lawmakers, there has been an official ban on U.S. assistance going to the far-right Azov Battalion. Verifying that the ban is being respected by Ukraine is almost impossible, especially now that Azov is an official part of the country’s National Guard. If the U.S. were blunt in publicly condemning the role of neo-Nazis and other far-right actors in Ukraine, including those within the armed forces and semi-official militias, it would help undermine Putin’s exaggerated rhetoric.

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Given the long history of fascism in Ukraine, dating back to World War II, it’s dishonest to dismiss the ongoing involvement of neo-Nazis in the politics and armed forces of Ukraine. In the midst of the invasion, and with the massive flow of Western arms into Ukraine, it is unimaginable that U.S. and NATO weaponry will not fall into the hands of some of these forces. Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar is one of the few members of Congress to publicly criticize the increased flow of weapons. She said “the consequences of flooding Ukraine” with weapons “are unpredictable and likely disastrous,” and that she was particularly concerned about “paramilitary groups w/out accountability.” In her Twitter thread on the issue, Omar clarified, “I support giving Ukraine the resources it needs to defend its people, I just have legitimate concerns about the size and scope.”

The steady post-Cold War expansion of NATO, combined with the U.S.-backed removal of a democratically elected, pro-Russia president in 2014, along with the increased flow of weapons to Ukraine, and the bloody eight-year war against Russian separatists in the east of the country are all major aspects of Moscow’s narrative. They do not in any way constitute a reasonable justification for this brutal invasion, but this history will all be relevant to any peace settlement.

There is much discussion these days about the events in Ukraine heralding a new era in international order. Within the elite U.S. foreign policy power structure, we are witnessing evidence of a merging of neoconservative Cold War politics and the “military humanism” at the heart of the Clinton administration’s justification for military action in the 1990s. Putin’s own actions have contributed to an expansion of the very threats he claims to be confronting. His criminal invasion of Ukraine has fueled U.S. and NATO efforts to increase their ground forces near Russia; the U.S. has deployed more than 15,000 troops to Europe in response and the total number of U.S. troops in Europe is approaching 100,000. The invasion has attracted even more neo-Nazis and white supremacists as “foreign fighters,” and they are pouring into Ukraine under the cover of defending the country against foreign aggression. Russia’s actions will also further flood the region with mercenaries and weapons that can easily be transferred and trafficked. The Russian economy is being pummeled, and brave protests against the war are spreading inside Russia. Putin may have some fifth-dimensional chess he believes he is playing, but everything we currently understand suggests that he has made a monumental series of severe military and political miscalculations.

The Biden administration has made a number of decisions over the past two weeks that indicate there are influential voices of restraint at high levels of power in the administration. This week, the U.S. nixed a proposal by Poland to transfer MiG-29 warplanes to Ukraine, saying it could be viewed by Russia as escalatory and make direct conflict between NATO and Russia more likely. On March 2, the Pentagon canceled a previously scheduled intercontinental ballistic missile test, and the administration has made a consistent case against imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine despite impassioned pleas from Ukraine and indications that many Americans want one — or think they do.

The decisions made now in Washington, other NATO capitals, and Moscow will have sweeping ramifications for years to come. Citizens of Western nations cannot control the actions of Putin, but they can advocate for commonsense responses from their own leaders. This requires considering the predictable and foreseeable long-term consequences of short-term action. In the face of heinous atrocities against civilians and a heartbreaking refugee crisis, it is understandable that good people would demand extreme action in the name of bringing it all to a halt. The tragic reality is that escalation by the U.S. and NATO will not achieve that, certainly not without grave costs, and could lead to an even worse catastrophe for Ukrainian civilians, if not a wider global conflict. In that case, the only beneficiaries will be those who are now winning the war in Ukraine: the weapons manufacturers and arms dealers.

The post U.S. and NATO’s Unprecedented Weapons Transfers to Ukraine Could Prolong the War appeared first on The Intercept.

Many governments of the world have denounced Putin’s actions. But when it comes to the U.S. and its NATO allies, these condemnations demand greater scrutiny. While many statements from Western leaders may be accurate regarding the nature of Russia’s actions, the U.S. and other NATO nations are in a dubious position to take a moralistic stance in condemning Russia. That they do so with zero recognition of their own hypocrisy, provocative actions, and history of unbridled militarism — particularly in the case of the U.S. — is deeply problematic. From the beginning of this crisis, Putin has exploited the militarism and past bombing campaigns of the U.S. and NATO to frame his own warped justification for his murderous campaign in Ukraine. But the fact that Putin is trying to justify the unjustifiable does not mean that we must ignore the U.S. actions that fuel his narrative.

In recent days, U.S. and NATO officials have highlighted Russia’s use of banned weapons, including cluster munitions, and have said their use constitutes violations of international law. This is indisputably true. What goes virtually unmentioned in much of the reporting on this topic is that the U.S., like both Russia and Ukraine, refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The U.S. has repeatedly used cluster bombs, going back to the war in Vietnam and the “secret” bombings of Cambodia. In the modern era, both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush used them. President Barack Obama used cluster bombs in a 2009 attack in Yemen that killed some 55 people, the majority of them women and children. Despite the ban, which was finalized in 2008 and went into effect in 2010, the U.S. continued to sell cluster bombs to nations like Saudi Arabia, which regularly used them in its attacks in Yemen. In 2017, President Donald Trump reversed an internal U.S. policy aimed at limiting the use of certain types of cluster munitions, a move which a Human Rights Watch expert warned “could embolden others to use cluster munitions that have caused so much human suffering.” None of this exonerates Russia for its unconscionable use of cluster bombs against civilians, but these facts are clearly relevant when assessing the credibility of the U.S.

It is much easier to express outrage at the actions and crimes of a foreign autocrat than it is to come to terms with the conduct of your own government. This is why the images of masses of Russians protesting in the streets is a more powerful repudiation of Putin’s war than the rhetoric from U.S. politicians on cable news or the statements from NATO officials.

It is also true that the laws of war and international law should apply not only to the declared bad guys of the moment or to parties that unilaterally attack other nations, but also to every nation — including our own. Putin has framed his aggression against Ukraine in part as a response to NATO expansion, and he and other Russian officials have in recent weeks invoked the 1999 Kosovo war as precedent for Russia’s current actions in Ukraine.

Moscow’s argument is that the U.S. and NATO, under the “pretext” of “humanitarian intervention,” and with no United Nations authorization, unilaterally bombed Serbia for more than two months in 1999 followed by a ground incursion into Kosovo. In February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested, in remarks at the U.N., that the U.S. had set a precedent with the Kosovo war and that this negated the value of Western critiques of Russia’s plans to attack Ukraine. “I have to recall these facts, because some Western colleagues prefer to forget them,” Putin said in his February 24 speech. “When we mentioned the [Kosovo war], they prefer to avoid speaking about international law.”

Although many of Putin’s comparisons are nonsense and — even when they are cogent — do nothing to justify his own current murderous campaign, there are relevant insights we can extract from reviewing some of NATO’s actions in Kosovo. The most direct analogy in recent U.S. military history to Putin’s large-scale ground invasion of Ukraine is obviously the Iraq War. Yet it’s important to examine the Kosovo air war because it highlights military tactics that the U.S. and NATO now rightly condemn Russia for using. Like Iraq, it also illustrates the entrenched double standard that permeates the consistently hypocritical U.S. response to the actions of its enemies.

Slobodan Miloševi? had for many years imposed a system of minority rule, repression, and terror against Kosovo Albanians, which constituted 90 percent of the southern province’s population. Beginning in 1989, he began to hack away at Kosovo’s long-held autonomous status within the Yugoslav federation. The situation steadily deteriorated over the next decade as Yugoslavia disintegrated, and by 1998 the U.S. was threatening to intervene militarily to confront Miloševi?, accusing his forces of massacring and terrorizing Albanian civilians and plotting a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Throughout the year leading up to the NATO bombing, Miloševi?’s forces regularly clashed with armed insurgents from the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army. After the killing of several police officers in early 1998, Miloševi?’s forces launched a murderous retaliatory campaign in which they repeatedly killed civilians, including the family members of KLA guerrillas. Human rights groups also documented abuses by the KLA, including killings and kidnappings of civilians, though on a far smaller scale than those carried out by Serbian forces. This situation, combined with the general state of repression of ethnic Albanians, brought Kosovo to wider public attention and drew sharper focus from the U.S. and NATO, which stood accused, earlier in the decade, of failing to respond earlier to the mass slaughter of Bosnian Muslims.

There were also influential voices in the U.S. — including then-Sen. Joe Biden, who advocated directly targeting Serbia and Miloševi? since the Bosnia war — and the worsening situation in Kosovo helped them make their case. “We talk about humanitarian interests — it far exceeds the humanitarian interest,” Biden said in October 1998. “If I were president, I would just bomb him, and I mean that sincerely, and I would have the NATO allies come along.” Belgrade’s position was that it was engaged in a fight against “terrorist” KLA militants and that the U.S. and NATO were attempting to undermine the country’s sovereignty, a position supported by both Russia and China. As the violence intensified in early 1999, and reports of Serbian police and special forces killing civilians garnered more public attention, the prospect of a U.S.-NATO war became real.

By March 1999, an estimated 460,000 residents of Kosovo had been internally displaced, forced from their homes, or fled to neighboring countries. The U.S.-NATO position was that given the mass atrocities committed by Bosnian Serb forces throughout the early 1990s in Bosnia, particularly the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, it was necessary to stop Miloševi? from accelerating a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the majority ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. Multiple subsequent war crimes trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia determined the Srebrenica massacre to be an act of genocide.

NATO asserted that in order to avert a bombing campaign, Miloševi? would have to sign the Rambouillet Accord and agree to the deployment of as many as 30,000 NATO-led troops in Kosovo. The document, drafted by NATO and signed by representatives of the Kosovo Albanians, contained a provision that stated “NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access” not just in Kosovo but also throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In mid-March, international monitors pulled out of Kosovo as NATO military action grew imminent. Miloševi?’s forces used the opportunity to intensify their rampages through KLA strongholds, burning Albanian homes and shops. Clinton dispatched his envoy Richard Holbrooke to Belgrade to personally meet with Miloševi? on March 23. “We presented the ultimatum to Milosevic that if he didn’t sign the agreement, the bombing would start,” Holbrooke recalled. “And he said, ‘No.’”

Russia was the most powerful ally of Miloševi? and was dead set against the U.S. and NATO bombing Serbia. Clinton failed to get U.N. approval for a military operation, in part because of Russia’s repeated threats of a veto, so he sidestepped the fierce debates in both Congress and the U.N. and, on March 24, proceeded with a NATO military operation. Congress never authorized the war despite the efforts of Biden, one of the most passionate proponents of bombing Serbia. Russia, for its part, denounced the bombing as prematurely abandoning diplomacy and characterized it as a violation of the U.N. charter. From Moscow’s perspective, NATO was steadily asserting its dominance over the republics of the former Yugoslavia, which had been a socialist, nonaligned state since the end of World War II.

At the end of the bombing, Russian forces entered Kosovo ahead of NATO and briefly took control of a key airport resulting in a showdown between NATO and Russia, which some analysts feared could have severe consequences. Putin, who at the time was head of Russia’s national security council, has actually claimed he had a role in the incident. While it was ultimately resolved peacefully, at one point during the standoff a British general refused to implement the orders of U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, the NATO supreme allied commander, to block the runway. Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson reportedly told Clark, “I am not going to start Third World War for you.” The U.S. ultimately established a large military base in the Balkans, Camp Bondsteel, and led the effort to make Kosovo, at the time a Serbian province, an independent state. To Russia, this campaign constituted an act of aggression by NATO, in circumvention of the U.N., that carved up the territory of a Russian ally in Europe and resulted in a new U.S.-NATO military base in Europe.

“High U.S. officials confirm that it was primarily the bombing of Russian ally Serbia — without even informing them in advance — that reversed Russian efforts to work together with the U.S. somehow to construct a post-Cold War European security order,” said Noam Chomsky in a recent interview. This “reversal accelerated with the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Libya after Russia agreed not to veto a UN Security Council Resolution that NATO at once violated.”

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None of this history lends an iota of legitimacy to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. What it does offer, however, is an opportunity for the citizens of the U.S. and NATO countries to review the history of their own forces and to examine the ways in which our conduct damages our moral standing and ultimately gives propagandistic fodder to leaders like Putin.

The fact that Miloševi? was a murderous gangster who orchestrated mass deportations, atrocities, and widespread killings of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo does not justify NATO’s repeated use of cluster bombs, including on a crowded marketplace and hospital in the city of Niš, killing more than a dozen people. Human Rights Watch determined NATO killed between 90 to 150 civilians in cluster bomb attacks. Nor does it exonerate Clark, the NATO supreme allied commander, for ordering the deliberate missile attack on Radio Television Serbia that killed 16 media workers in April 1999, an act which Amnesty International labeled a war crime. It does not excuse the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy (which killed three journalists), or any of the other U.S.-NATO attacks that killed civilians.

The U.S. and its allies also sought, at times, to cover up or justify incidents in which they killed civilians. In one attack, NATO struck a civilian passenger train on a bridge, killing 10 people. It later released a videotape that was played at three times the speed, making it appear as though the strike was a split-second decision and a tragic mistake. But moments after the strike, NATO fired another missile at the train. In another incident, NATO bombed a convoy of Albanian refugees fleeing Serb forces on April 14, 1999. Some 73 civilians, including 16 children, were killed in the attack, which was carried out by an American F-16. After initially suggesting that Serbian forces had killed the refugees, NATO was forced — when international journalists traveled to the scene — to admit responsibility for the strike. NATO then expressed “deep regret” for what it labeled a mistake, though NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea also asserted that “sometimes one has to risk the lives of the few to save the lives of the many.” A month later, NATO bombed another convoy of Kosovo Albanian refugees in a similar strike.

The overwhelming majority of Kosovo Albanians who were killed by Serbian forces perished after the NATO bombing began. Miloševi? unleashed both conventional and special units as well as vicious paramilitaries in a “systematic and deliberately organized” mass killing and forced displacement operation. The Independent International Commission on Kosovo concluded, “The NATO air campaign did not provoke the attacks on the civilian Kosovar population but the bombing created an environment that made such an operation feasible.” More than 8,600 Albanian civilians were killed or disappeared between 1998-2000, according to human rights groups; more than 2,000 Serb, Roma, and other non-Albanian civilians died or went missing during the same period.

“Within nine weeks of the beginning of the air strikes, nearly 860,000 Kosovo Albanians fled or were expelled,” according to a report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. They did so amid a campaign of terror, rape, and pillaging by both official and paramilitary forces. “The NATO strikes were accompanied by escalating violence on the ground and a large refugee outflow that included organized expulsions,” according to the UNHCR. “The sequence of violence and displacement underlined the importance of the Western powers in the events that produced the refugee emergency.” After the war, when NATO occupied Kosovo, some 200,000 Serbs, Roma, and other minorities fled their homes, the UNHCR found.

The crimes of despots, dictators, and thugs do not give the U.S. and NATO permission to kill civilians.

These facts do not justify a single thing Miloševi? and his forces did, and Miloševi? deserved his indictment for war crimes. International prosecutors charged that Miloševi? “planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in a deliberate and widespread or systematic campaign of terror and violence directed at Kosovo Albanian civilians.” The vast majority of the charges against Miloševi? were for killings and other crimes against Albanians that occurred after the start of the NATO bombing. In 2001, after being ousted from power amid his attempts to overturn an election he lost, Miloševi? was arrested by Serbian special forces in the middle of the night and extradited to The Hague to face trial for his role in mass killings and other atrocities in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. He died in jail before his trial ended. The crimes of despots, dictators, and thugs — including vile criminals like Miloševi? — do not give the U.S. and NATO permission to kill civilians. Nor do they grant authority to the U.S. to bomb other nations for 78 days, particularly when Congress has explicitly declined to authorize the action. The crimes of declared enemies also do not erase the culpability of the U.S. and its personnel for war crimes.

It is precisely the history of these actions by the U.S. and NATO that Putin has sought to weaponize in his insane attempts to justify his invasion of Ukraine. That some of these claims are rooted in fact does not absolve Putin of a single Russian atrocity. But citizens of the U.S. and other NATO nations should deeply examine whether they support the use by their own governments of some of the very tactics and weapons favored by Putin. It is also relevant that to this day there has been no accountability for the crimes committed by the U.S. in its invasion and occupation of Iraq, its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the post-9/11 CIA torture and kidnapping program, or the killing of civilians in drone and other airstrikes in numerous countries. The U.S. has systematized a self-exoneration machine. And Russia and every nation on Earth knows it.

Since the invasion of Ukraine began, people expressing horror and outrage at Putin’s actions in Ukraine while also referencing the history of the U.S. and NATO governments have been portrayed as traitors or apologists for Russia. This is a classic tactic in the history of pro-war discourse; it has been used throughout U.S. history and was a common cudgel used to attack anti-war views in the aftermath of 9/11.

The U.S. has systematized a self-exoneration machine.

There is no contradiction between standing with the people of Ukraine and against Russia’s heinous invasion and being honest about the hypocrisy, war crimes, and militarism of the U.S. and NATO. We have an undeniable moral responsibility to prioritize holding our own government accountable for its crimes because they are being done in our names and with our tax dollars. That does not mean we should be silent in the face of the crimes of Russia or other nations, but we do bear a specific responsibility for the acts of war committed by our own nations.

Some prominent U.S. politicians and diplomats have also called for collective punishment against ordinary Russian people in order to pressure them into toppling Putin’s government, and Sen. Lindsey Graham went so far as to openly encourage Russians to assassinate Putin. While many opponents of Russia’s invasion and Putin have been clear that they do not hold Russian people responsible for the crimes of their leaders, some high-profile U.S. political figures have taken a different stance. “There are no more ‘innocent’ ‘neutral’ Russians anymore,” tweeted Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama. “Everyone has to make a choice — support or oppose this war. The only way to end this war is if 100,000s, not thousands, protest against this senseless war. Putin can’t arrest you all!” McFaul later deleted the tweet. Ordinary Russians will be key to any meaningful hope of ending this war and Putin’s insanity, but we can’t overlook the brutality they face from their own government. Those who are protesting inside of Russia deserve immense credit for their bravery. Sanctions aimed at billionaire Putin cronies and government officials responsible for this invasion are fundamentally different from sanctions that directly impact civilians in an effort to blackmail them into an uprising against a regime that has shown no compunction about violently repressing and at times murdering dissidents.

The global response to Putin’s war has already exposed the tragic double standard when it comes to war victims. The people of Yemen have been suffering for more than a decade under a merciless campaign of bombing initiated by Obama in 2009 that morphed into a scorched-earth campaign by U.S.-armed-and-supported Saudi Arabia, which continues to this moment. How many of the people with Ukrainian flag avatars on their Twitter profiles have spent days or weeks pleading for the world to stand up for ordinary Yemenis living under the hell of American bombs and Saudi warplanes? The same question applies in the case of the Palestinians who live under an apartheid state imposed by Israel and backed up by a sustained campaign of annihilation supported and encouraged by the U.S. How can people argue in favor of Ukrainian rights to self-defense while simultaneously stripping Palestinians of that same right?

Vladimir Putin and the Russian officials responsible for this invasion of Ukraine should face justice. Once the evidence has been gathered, every war crime should be investigated, indictments issued, and prosecutions undertaken. The obvious venue for this would be before the International Criminal Court. Yet here is an inconvenient fact: The U.S. has refused to ratify the Rome Statute, which established the ICC. In 2002, Bush signed legislation that authorizes the U.S. to literally conduct military operations in The Hague to liberate any American personnel brought to trial for war crimes. It is indefensible that the U.S. has established a precedent that powerful nations need not be held accountable for their crimes. It is a precedent that Russia knows well, exploits regularly, and will certainly use again and again.

The post Putin’s Criminal Invasion of Ukraine Highlights Some Ugly Truths About U.S. and NATO appeared first on The Intercept.

The statement — which was also signed by former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman and Democratic diplomatic heavyweight Dennis Ross, and published by the Washington Institute, a militarist think tank — argues that the Biden administration must “take steps that lead Iran to believe that persisting in its current behavior and rejecting a reasonable diplomatic resolution will put to risk its entire nuclear infrastructure, one built painstakingly over the last three decades.” They suggest that President Joe Biden consider “orchestrating high-profile military exercises by the U.S. Central Command, potentially in concert with allies and partners, that simulate what would be involved in such a significant operation, including rehearsing air-to-ground attacks on hardened targets and the suppression of Iranian missile batteries.”

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Iran analyst Hooman Majd, author of “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran,” said the letter from the former U.S. officials “is just plain silly.” He told The Intercept, “There’s no ‘restoring’ Iran’s fear — the last time it feared a U.S. military strike or war was in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion when it looked like the easy victory there and in Afghanistan would indeed perhaps lead to ‘real men going to Tehran.’” Majd points out that despite repeated U.S. and Israeli threats of military action, Iran has steadily “beefed up” its military capabilities. “So I’d say that Iran doesn’t fear U.S. military action against it now,” he added. “All of the Israeli bluster about preparing for war with Iran hasn’t changed their calculus — and they know Israel is probably more likely to attack their facilities than the U.S. is — so why would any U.S. bluster or ‘preparations’ for war do so?”

Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, blasted the statement, telling The Intercept: “The exaggerated faith in the miracles that U.S. military threats can deliver are not limited to any one party in the United States, but is intrinsic to the establishment religion that American security is achieved through global military hegemony.”

The former U.S. officials argued that their strategy is aimed at forcing Iran to the negotiating table and to compel it to reverse any efforts to develop nuclear weapons made in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s abandonment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. “While the United States has recognized Iran’s right to civilian nuclear power, Iran’s behavior continues to indicate that it not only wants to preserve a nuclear weapons option but is actively moving toward developing that capability,” they wrote. While advocating for potential military action — and openly calling on Biden to make explicit military threats — the authors of the letter claim their intent is to support diplomatic efforts. “[W]e are not urging the Biden Administration to threaten ‘regime change’ or to advocate for a ‘regime change’ strategy under cover of non-proliferation,” they wrote. “This is not about hostility toward Iran or its people.”

Parsi, an Iranian American analyst and author of “Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy,” added, “Rather than being the solution to the crisis, the military threat the U.S. poses to Iran is a key reason why the Iranian nuclear program has expanded. The more a country is faced with military threats, the more it will demand a nuclear deterrence.”

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During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden repeatedly criticized Trump’s abandonment of the nuclear deal and his assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad on January 3. But nearly a year into his presidency, Biden has taken no action to return to the deal and has staked out an increasingly hostile stance toward Tehran. In late August, Biden appeared to be placing military options on the table. During a press gaggle with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the White House, Biden said, “If diplomacy fails” with Iran, “we’re ready to turn to other options.” The Biden administration has maintained and, in some cases, expanded U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, which has spurred allegations from Tehran that the U.S. is already waging a nonmilitary war against Iranian civilians. Iran is demanding a cessation of sanctions as a precondition to return to negotiations.

“Iran has every reason to want to restore the JCPOA — at least in terms of getting the most onerous sanctions against it lifted. But it hardly is going to engage because it thinks the U.S. will go to war with it if it doesn’t,” said Majd.

“Donald Trump’s military threats and broad economic sanctions are precisely why we are in this mess right now. To believe that more Trumpian conduct by the United States will break the nuclear deadlock bewilders the mind,” says Parsi. “Trump’s exit from the deal and the lack of confidence that the United States will stay in the deal beyond 2024 has profoundly undermined the value of American promises of sanctions relief. The Iranians are hesitating largely because they do not believe that the economic benefits the U.S. promises will be forthcoming. No amount of military threats will change that fundamental weakness in the U.S. negotiating position.”

The post Two Former CIA Directors Call on Biden to Threaten Iran Militarily appeared first on The Intercept.