The Ukrainian government is intensifying its hunt for pro-Russian “collaborators,” lodging charges against hundreds, if not thousands, of its own citizens, particularly in regions that recently came back under the control of Kiev. The accused face prison sentences, in addition to heavy fines, seizure of property, and the loss of other rights. According to data recently released by the General Prosecutor’s office, the government has opened more than 18,000 cases related to “crimes against national security,” which include treason, sabotage, “assistance to the aggressor state,” and “encroachment on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian government, hailed throughout the West as the embodiment of freedom and democracy, is waging a war not just against a foreign power, but against a section of its own population.
In late October, the director of a secondary school in Kharkiv was accused of collaborating with the enemy because he told instructors that they would reopen the institution, hold classes in Russian, use Russian textbooks, and employ Russian educational standards. A week earlier, another man from the region was charged with traitorous actions because, as the head of a municipal road repair shop in Balaklya, he made publicly-owned equipment available to Russian forces. Kharkiv was under occupation at the time.
In numerous instances, individuals are being targeted for nothing more than expressing some form of political support for Russia. Articles published in RBK-Ukraine between October 8 and 25 report that all of the following individuals are facing some form of collaboration-related charge: a resident of Yuzhnye who tried to convince acquaintances that the expansion of Russian sovereignty to Ukrainian territory was just; a woman who more than once discussed with a group of people her view that Ukraine’s independent existence was wrong; a resident of Kharkiv who repeated Russian “propaganda” that Moscow’s invasion was justified. A news anchor with Luhansk 24, a pro-Russian press service, has been notified that he is being investigated for collaborationism.
More prosecutions of this type are forthcoming. “Law enforcement is continuing its work to expose Ukrainian citizens who are supporters of Kremlin policy,” noted Ukr.net on October 15.
Accusations of “aiding the enemy” are also being leveled against people for, it would seem, attempting to keep their communities alive in times of war. A 32-year-old man also from Kharkiv is being prosecuted because he allegedly voluntarily agreed to guard a pharmacy and a depot holding humanitarian supplies while the city was under occupation. The head of the tiny village of Valenkove is facing charges because “acting on instructions from representatives of the Russian Federation, the woman collected data and applications from local residents to address organizational and humanitarian issues.”
Indictments that carry 15-year or more prison sentences—joining anti-Ukrainian partisan forces, telling the Russian military the location of Ukrainian forces, reporting on “patriotic” Ukrainians, and providing economic and other resources to the Russian side—are also being doled out. One detainee, captured on the charge that he was “employed” by a “people’s militia of the occupiers,” died because he allegedly sought to flee and blew himself up stepping on a Russian mine.
Areas of Ukraine that have large Russian populations are being singled out in the hunt for collaborators. According to Pressorg.25, most of the recently-created “investigative offices were opened in the Luhansk, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions.” In August, The New York Times published an article about the work of pro-Ukrainian militias working behind enemy lines. According to the newspaper, one of their missions, in addition to killing alleged collaborators, is to monitor educators believed to be promoting a pro-Russian line. “Partisans,” however, “will not attack teachers,” they write. Rather, they “have sought to humiliate them through leaflets they often post on utility poles with dark warnings for collaborators, as part of their psychological operations.”
Ukraine’s recently-passed laws on collaborationism are extremely broad. They include things such as “public denial of the implementation of armed aggression against Ukraine, establishment and approval of temporary occupation of part of the territory of Ukraine,” “public appeals to support the decisions and/or actions of the aggressor state, armed formations, occupation administration of the aggressor state,” “implementation of propaganda of the aggressor state in educational institutions,” “voluntary occupation of a non-leading position (not related to the performance of organizational, administrative or economic functions) in illegal authorities established in the temporarily occupied territory,” and “participation in” or “organization and conduct of events of a political nature, implementation of information activities in cooperation with the aggressor state and/or its occupation administration, aimed at supporting the aggressor state and/or evading its responsibility for the armed aggression against Ukraine.”
Particularly for those located in areas that have come under occupation, it is easy to fall afoul of laws that ban essentially any engagement with Russian military or political authorities, much less the expression of a political thought that contradicts the official line of the government in Kiev.
Punishments include stripping people of the right to hold various offices or other posts for up to 15 years, confiscation of property, arrest for up to six months, imprisonment from three to 15 years or for life, and sentencing to two years of correctional labor.
Charges, trials, and punishments are proceeding at a rapid pace. The Telegram channels of Ukraine’s General Prosecutor and other state offices are filled with near-daily photos of the newly-accused. Under conditions of martial law, the destruction of infrastructure, and the exodus of more than seven million people—including, no doubt, many attorneys—it is impossible that anyone caught in this maelstrom is receiving a fair trial. Guilty verdicts and sentences follow quickly on the heels of charges. Online images show that among the accused are the elderly and women, many of whom appear to be visibly poor.
The pictures of defendants released by the state are blurred but often still identifiable. The Ukrainian military is currently using US-provided facial-recognition-technology to both monitor its own population and torment the families of dead Russian soldiers by finding their social media accounts online, contacting their relatives, and sending them images of their dead bodies. In posting photos of those charged with collaboration on social media, state officials are creating conditions under which friends and family of the accused can be found and made subject to collective punishment.
At the same time, there are efforts underway to strip parliamentary representatives from opposition political parties, which were banned by President Zelensky in May, of their seats, on the grounds that they are sympathetic to Russia and, by virtue of that fact, collaborationists.
Last Thursday, a Dutch court reached a verdict on the 2014 MH17 airplane crash in the Donbass. Four men were on trial for the downing of the civilian flight which killed 298 people, including passengers and crew. Three out of the four men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison while the fourth – the only one of the defendants who was represented by counsel at the trial – was acquitted. According to Euronews:
Russians Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko were found responsible for the disaster, Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said.
Another Russian national, Oleg Polatov, was acquitted of the charges.
The court declared that Girkin, Dubinskiy and Kharchenko must also compensate the relatives of the victims a total of €60 million. Prosecutors and the defendants have two weeks to file an appeal.
The quartet on trial were not present in the courtroom. All at large, they refused to attend the trial, which lasted two and a half years…
…The plane was struck by what the Dutch court established was a missile supplied by Moscow and broke up mid-air, scattering wreckage and bodies over farmland and fields of sunflowers in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has condemned the trial and its verdict as RT reported:
The decision taken on Thursday by a Dutch court on the MH17 plane crash was absolutely political, the Russian Foreign Ministry has insisted in a statement. Earlier in the day, judges found three people guilty of downing the Malaysian passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014….
Moscow has made it clear that, in accordance with the country’s constitution, it will not be extraditing its citizens.
The court’s decision was based on the conclusions of Dutch prosecutors, which, in turn, were built upon the accounts of anonymous witnesses and evidence presented by the Ukrainian Security Service, which is “an interested party” in the case, the ministry argued. Arguments presented by the Russian side, including data declassified by the Russian Defense Ministry were discarded, it added.
It’s easy to assume that Russia would deny guilt regardless of what actually happened. However, there is reason for skepticism about the investigation that the trial relied upon. First, there was reporting by the late Robert Parry of Consortium News whose investigation and sources revealed gaps and logical inconsistencies in the official narrative of how the ill-fated plane came down:
According to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which while “led” by the Dutch was guided by the Ukrainian SBU intelligence service, the Russians delivered the Buk anti-missile battery at a border crossing about 30 miles southeast of Luhansk on the night of July 16-17, 2014. From that point, there would have been an easy and logical route to the JIT’s claimed firing site.
The convoy would have followed one of two roads west to H21 and then taken H21 southwest to the area around Snizhne before getting onto a back road to Pervomaiskyi where the JIT says the launch occurred.
Instead, according to the JIT account, the convoy took a strange and circuitous route, skirting south of Luhansk to Yenakiieve, a town that sits along highway E50, which incidentally offered another easy route south to Snizhne. Instead of going that way, according to the JIT, the convoy proceeded southwest to the city of Donetsk, stopping there before turning east on H21 passing through a number of towns on the way to Snizhne.
Not only does this route make no sense, especially given the extreme sensitivity of the Russians providing a powerful anti-aircraft missile battery to the rebels, an operation that would call for the utmost secrecy and care, but the eventual positioning of the Buk system in the remote town of Pervomaiskyi makes little military sense.
According to the JIT’s video narrative, the presumed purpose of the Russians taking such a huge risk of supplying a Buk system was to protect rebel troops from Ukrainian military aircraft firing from heights beyond the range of shoulder-fired MANPADs.
So why would the Russians position the Buk battery in the south far from the frontlines of the heaviest fighting which was occurring in the north and then have the crew shoot down a commercial airliner when, according to the JIT, there were no military aircraft in the area?
To accept the JIT’s narrative, you have to swallow a large dose of credulity, plus assume that the Russians are extremely incompetent, so incompetent that they would send a highly secret operation on a wild ride across the eastern Ukrainian countryside, ignoring easy routes to the target location (only about 70 miles from the Russian border) in favor of a route more than twice as long (about 150 miles) while passing through heavily populated areas where the convoy could be easily photographed.
Then, the Russians (or their rebel allies) would have placed the Buk system in a spot with marginal if any military value, misidentify a commercial airliner as some kind of military aircraft, and – with a sudden burst of efficiency and competence – shoot it down.
The JIT’s claim about the exfiltration of the remaining Buks has similar problems of logic. The JIT asserts that rather than take the most direct (and most discreet) route back to Russia by heading east, the missile battery supposedly traveled north to Luhansk before crossing back into Russia, a longer trip through more populous areas, another head-shaker.
Parry also stated that his sources in the intelligence community told him that it appeared rogue Ukrainian forces were responsible for the downing:
“I was also told that at least some CIA analysts shared the doubts about Russia’s guilt and came to believe that the MH-17 shoot-down was the work of a rogue and out-of-control Ukrainian team with the possible hope that the airliner was a Russian government plane returning President Vladimir Putin from South America.”
In addition, there had been eyewitness reports of at least one military fighter jet in close proximity to MH17 before it went down, which cast doubt on a BUK missile being the source of the plane’s demise.
Other investigative journalists have looked into the case and come up with evidence that casts doubt on many aspects of the Ukrainian-produced “evidence” accepted by the JIT investigators and used as the basis for the trial of the four men. The film below includes interviews with eyewitnesses to the crash and the moments leading up to it, the Malaysian Prime Minister, an officer from the Malaysian military who was originally tasked with collecting the black boxes, and the conclusions of outside experts who studied the aforementioned evidence provided by Ukraine.
“This is getting ridiculous,” an unnamed NATO diplomat was reported to say, “the Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”
The outburst came after the Ukrainian government denied consensus NATO and American opinion that it had goofed up and misfired a missile into the territory of one of its biggest backers, killing two. It would have been noble to admit the mistake outright and show some remorse, and the incident would have been unlikely to be held against Ukraine. After all, it is the one facing an invasion, and friendly fire incidents happen in a saturated theatre even with the best militaries, even with top-tier deconfliction processes in place.
The most responsible behavior in the incident came from Poland, the country struck by the missile. Warsaw stated that an investigation was underway, and then called NATO to discuss the apparent “attack.” Once it was beyond a reasonable doubt that the strike wasn’t from Russia, Poland withdrew its Article 4 request.
But for about fourteen hours, the threat of nuclear war loomed large over the Euro-Atlantic. The claim that a Russian missile had flown into Poland hinged on the words of a lone anonymous “senior intelligence official,” amplified first by the Associated Press and then by lobbyists masquerading as national security experts. Its spread was recklessly fuelled by the Baltic states and Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president said it was time for a serious NATO countermeasure. The Ukrainian foreign minister channelled his inner girl-boss and said it was a “conspiracy theory” to say that Poland was hit by Ukrainian air defences. Ukrainian M.P. Lesia Vasylenko tweeted, “2 #russia missiles fly over #Ukraine #Polish border. Hits of polish territory and so far 2 possible civilian casualties. This calls for @NATO article 5 reaction. Right?” Then, as the narrative collapsed in real time, tweeted again, “This is #russia’s fault! If #putin hadn’t gone crazy with a missile shower over #Ukraine yesterday, there would be no hits. In #Kyiv, #Kharkiv or #Przewodow”.
The BBC reported, “Baltic states on the front line with Russia were quick to call on the collective defence of Nato. The President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda declared on Twitter: “Every inch of NATO territory must be defended!” Others said the incident made the case for even greater military support for Ukraine. Latvia’s defence minister, Artis Pabriks, suggested NATO could provide more air defenses for Poland and “part of the territory of Ukraine.” Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s prime minister, said the West should give Ukraine more military, humanitarian, and financial support.
Put simply, a whole bunch of people called for direct war between the two largest nuclear powers, all for their petty localized interests.
Now that there is a consensus that the incident was a stray Ukrainian missile, it seems highly improbable that the Ukrainian government and some of their lobbyists in D.C. didn’t know that. It is almost impossible to conceive that a leader of a country at war had not received the frontline information from his battlefield command about the trajectory of the misfired border air-defense missile around the same time that he and his government were making statements about the urgency of NATO imposing collective defense.
In the parlance of D.C., it appears a clear case of deliberate “disinformation.” It is, quite frankly, unlikely that the Ukrainian government and military did not know that they were calling for what would have effectively amounted to a world war. Every sane military strategist knows the meaning of Article 5. The NATO states know that. The Baltic states should know that. Frustrated American intelligence and administration officials, trapped by their earlier Churchillian rhetoric, know that, at least by now. And yet.
A still contested puzzle in international relations is whether great powers influence their satellites or whether ideological small states drag (or “chain-gang”) their witless and myopic benefactors. As Schumpeter wrote, “there was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Roman allies…”
From a Machiavellian standpoint, one can understand why Ukrainian leadership would lie to the world to get everyone else to fight their war, even at the risk of nuclear annihilation. Deception is often more effective than force. Fidel Castro also tried to drag the Soviets into his war, but the Soviets were prudential enough to leash their dogs.
One would expect rational small states to zealously guard whatever small influence they have, instead of undermining the core interest of the group that protects their existence. So, what explains Baltic fanaticism about NATO enlargement or brinkmanship with Russia? What explains Ukrainian resistance to any grand bargain, to the point of antagonizing their allies? Whatever the result of a total war they seek so ardently, they would not survive one as an intact unit of polity anyway. So, what gives? There are potentially two causes, by no means exclusive, and possibly intertwined.
One, this is ideological. Historically, a simple hypothesis is often correct. But two—and here it gets more complicated—the bigger the alliance, the more constrained the choices of the hegemon. Expanding NATO consolidates the liberal-internationalist orthodoxy and multiplies an imperial, self-sustaining, and expanding bureaucracy, making it more difficult for a hegemon like the U.S. to act in its own interests as opposed to the interests of the group. No great power or empire in history has been this trapped by its own ideological overreach. Fenrir, in this case, is not only chained, but has proceeded to neuter himself.
NATO did not and would not do anything without the permission of Washington, D.C., but this episode presents an opportunity to contemplate and reconsider some peripheral alliance commitments, and the risk of resultant escalatory spirals. Next time the world might not be so lucky.
Note: The National Security Council was created as a result of the 1947 National Security Act, which also created an unaccountable agency known as the CIA. Emphasis in article below is from the original. – Natylie
“It means our response to the Covid pandemic was led by groups and agencies that are in the business of responding to wars and terrorist threats, not public health crises or disease outbreaks.“
As of March 13, 2020 the National Security Council (NSC) was officially in charge of the US government’s Covid policy.
Starting on March 18, 2020, The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was officially in charge of the US government’s Covid response.
The Covid Task Force Coordinator was brought in by the NSC
On March 11, 2020, at a Heritage Foundation Talk, Trump’s National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien, when discussing what the White House and NSC were doing about the virus, said:
“We brought into the White House Debi Birx, a fantastic physician and ambassador from the State Department. We appreciate Secretary Pompeo immediately moving her over to the White House at our, well at the President’s, request.” (min. 21:43 – 21:56)
The National Security Council was in charge of our Covid Policy
An astonishing government document dated March 13, 2020 entitled: “PanCAP AdaptedU.S. Government COVID-19 Response Plan” (PanCAP-A)(embedded at the end of this piece) reveals that United States policy in response to SARS-CoV-2 was set not by the public health agencies designated in pandemic preparedness protocols (Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act, PPD-44, BIA), but rather by the National Security Council, or NSC.
This is the pandemic response org chart, from p. 9 of PanCAP-A, showing the NSC solely responsible for Covid policy:
What is the National Security Council?
According to its website, the NSC “is the President’s principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his or her senior advisors and cabinet officials.”
The NSC does not include as regular attendees any representatives from public health-related agencies.
It does include the President’s National Security Advisor, who is “the President’s most important source of policy advice on foreign and national security policy,” according to the White House Transition Project’s document for The National Security Advisor and Staff. “In some administrations,” the document continues, “foreign and national security policy making is essentially centralized in the hands of the NSC advisor with minimal input from cabinet-level departments such as State or Defense.” Furthermore, “there is little statutory or legal constraint (beyond budgetary limits) in how the role of NSC advisor is defined or how the NSC staff is organized and operates.” (pp. 1-2)
In other words, if the NSC is in charge of Covid response, it can pretty much decide and impose anything it wants without any constraints or oversight, as long as the President agrees, or at least lets them take the lead.
But what exactly is PanCAP-A, in which the NSC appears in such a surprising Covid-response leadership role?
PanCAP-A is the closest we have to a national Covid response plan
PanCAP-A stands for Pandemic Crisis Action Plan – Adapted.
An exhaustive online search did not turn up the Pandemic Crisis Action Plan from 2018, which was apparently “adapted” to produce PanCAP-A. However, the existence of the original document is confirmed in various documents, including a statement on “Preparedness for COVID-19” presented to the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs on April 14, 2021.
In this statement, Elizabeth Zimmerman, a former FEMA Administrator, who is sharing with the Senate Committee her findings on “The Initial Pandemic Response and Lessons Learned,” says she had trouble finding the government’s plan for the US response to Covid-19:
“In researching disaster response plans to refresh my memory for this hearing, I found several detailed plans that were publicly available and saw mention of plans and directives that were not publicly available. The time spent searching for these plans and directives was frustrating for an experienced emergency manager…”
Then, in reference to the plans she was able to find, or knew about but may not have actually seen, she says:
“Following the Anthrax attacks in 2001, the federal government invested a lot of money on processes and plans centered on public health response – bioterrorism and pandemics in particular. … One of the latest plans, January 2017, is the Biological Incident Annex (BIA) to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans (FIOPs). The BIA is the federal organizing framework for responding and recovering from a range of biological threats, including pandemics.
However, it was not publicly seen that these plans were being used during the onset of COVID-19 nor does it seem that there was a national COVID-19 response plan.
Finally, she references the 2018 PanCAP, the adapted PanCAP, and then makes another surprising statement:
Also, there was a 2018 Pandemic Crisis Action Plan (PanCAP) that was customized for COVID-19 specifically and adopted in March 2020 by HHS and FEMA; the plan identified the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the Lead Federal Agency (LFA) with FEMA supporting for coordination. However, a mere five days after the national COVID-19 emergency was announced, FEMA became the LFA.” [BOLDFACE ADDED]
FEMA replaced HHS as the Lead Federal Agency, with no warning or preparation
What Zimmerman is saying here is that, in the PanCAP-A org chart, where the NSC is in charge of policy and the HHS is in charge of almost everything else – actually, FEMA is in charge of everything else.
This means that, in effect, starting on March 18, 2020, the HHS –which comprises the CDC, NIAID, NIH and other public-health-related agencies – had NO OFFICIAL LEADERSHIP ROLE in pandemic response – not in determining policy and not in implementing policy.
This is a staggering piece of information, considering that all pandemic preparedness plans, as Zimmerman notes, placed the Health and Human Services Agency (HHS) at the helm of pandemic response.
How was FEMA put in charge?
According to the Stafford Act, which “constitutes the statutory authority for most Federal disaster response activities especially as they pertain to FEMA and FEMA programs,” the disasters to which FEMA is empowered to respond include:
“any natural catastrophe (including any hurricane, tornado, storm, high water, winddriven water, tidal wave, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide, mudslide, snowstorm, or drought), or, regardless of cause, any fire, flood, or explosion, in any part of the United States, which in the determination of the President causes damage of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance under this Act to supplement the efforts and available resources of States, local governments, and disaster relief organizations in alleviating the damage, loss, hardship, or suffering caused thereby.”
Very clearly, FEMA is an agency neither designed nor intended to lead public health initiatives or the country’s response to disease outbreaks.
Yet, as Zimmerman reported, on March 18, 2020, just five days after the official date of PanCAP-A, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was removed from its lead role in pandemic response, and FEMA was (at least operationally if not policy-wise) put in charge.
In a Congressional Research Service report from February 2022, entitled “FEMA’s Role in the COVID-19 Federal Pandemic Response,” the opening paragraph states:
“On March 13, 2020, President Donald J. Trump declared a nationwide emergency under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (the Stafford Act, P.L. 93-288 as amended), authorizing assistance administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Five days later, the President notified then-FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor that the agency would assume leadership of the federal pandemic response effort—the first known instance of FEMA serving in such a role for a public health incident.”
“The agency’s response to COVID-19 has been unprecedented. When the White House directed FEMA to lead operations, COVID-19 became the first national pandemic response that FEMA has led since the agency was established in 1979. It was also the first time in U.S. history the President has declared a nationwide emergency under Section 501b of the Stafford Act and authorized Major Disaster Declarations for all states and territories for the same incident.” (p. 5)
A FEMA fact sheet from March 4, 2020 reveals that the agency was not given advanced warning of the enormous new responsibilities that would be thrust upon it just two weeks later:
“At this time, FEMA is not preparing an emergency declaration in addition to the Public Health Emergency declared by HHS on January 31, 2020.” (p. 2)
The table below is from a September 2021 report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Homeland Security, “Lessons Learned from FEMA’s Initial Response to COVID-19.” This document stresses that “The PanCAP-A did not address the changes that ensued when FEMA was designated the LFA. Furthermore, FEMA (and HHS) did not update the PanCAP-A or issue interim guidance addressing the changes in critical roles and responsibilities for each agency.” (p. 11)
BIA=Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans, January 2017
In other words, HHS – the agency designated by statute and experience to handle public health crises – was removed, and FEMA – the agency designated by statute and experience to “help people before, during and after disasters” like earthquakes and fires – was put in charge. But the pandemic planning document was not updated to reflect that change or how that change would affect the Covid response.
Why was FEMA suddenly and unexpectedly given this lead role? I would argue that the NSC wanted to ensure that no policy or response initiative emanating from the public health departments would play any role in the Covid response. Since FEMA had no planning documents or policies regarding disease or pandemic outbreaks, there would be nothing in the way of whatever the NSC wanted to do.
So what did the NSC want to do? PanCAP-A, in which the NSC takes the lead role in setting Covid policy, does not give a detailed answer, but does clearly place NSC policy above anything else that might contradict it.
What does PanCAP-A say?
On p. 1, under “Purpose” it states:
“This plan outlines the United States Government (USG) coordinated federal response activities for COVID-19 in the United States (U.S.). The President appointed the Vice President to lead the USG effort with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) serving as the Lead Federal Agency (LFA) consistent with the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 44.”
In other words, in accordance with a bunch of pandemic preparedness laws and directives, the HHS is the Lead Federal Agency in charge of pandemic response.
As we move through the document, however, the roles and responsibilities of the HHS become increasingly muddled and diminished.
On p. 6 under “Senior Leader Intent” it says:
“The National Security Council (NSC) requested adaptation of the PanCAP to address the ongoing threat posed by COVID-19 in support of the Administration’s efforts to monitor, contain, and mitigate the spread of the virus. The plan builds on objectives that prepare the USG to implement broader community and healthcare-based mitigation measures…” [BOLDFACE ADDED]
In other words, everything the Pan-CAP-A says about how the HHS is planning to address the pandemic is “adapted” in favor of “objectives” that prepare the government to implement “broader measures.”
On the next page, we get the exact same vague language under “Strategic Objectives,” which include implementing “broader community and healthcare-based mitigation measures.” A footnote tells us “These objectives were directed by the NSC Resilience DRG PCC on February 24, 2020.” [BOLDFACE ADDED]
What is the NSC Resilience DRG PCC? There is no explanation, appendix, or addendum, nor anything in the entire PanCAP-A to answer this question – a noteworthy omission, since it apparently defines the objectives upon which the entire US pandemic response is based.
Similarly, on p. 8 under “Concept of Operations,” we read:
“This concept of operations aligns interagency triggers to the CDC intervals for each phase and groups key federal actions according to response phase. It also layers in the COVID-19 Containment and Mitigation Strategy developed by the NSC.” [BOLDFACE ADDED]
There is no explanation or description of what the “Containment and Mitigation Strategy developed by the NSC” is referring to.
Conclusion
Everything we thought we knew about the US government’s Covid response is upended in the Pandemic Crisis Action Plan – Adapted (PanCAP-A), which gave the NSC sole authority over policy, and the simultaneous Stafford Act declaration, which resulted in FEMA/DHS taking the lead role in its implementation.
This means the doctors on the White House Task Force who headed HHS departments – including Fauci, Redfield, and Collins, the heads of the CDC, NIAID and NIH – had no authority over determining or implementing Covid policy and were following the lead of the NSC and the DHS (Department of National Security), which is the department under which FEMA operates.
It means our response to the Covid pandemic was led by groups and agencies that are in the business of responding to wars and terrorist threats, not public health crises or disease outbreaks.
I believe that the national security authorities took control of the Covid pandemic response not just in the US but in many of our allied countries (the UK, Australia, Germany, Israel and others) because they knew SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered virus that leaked from a lab researching potential bioweapons.
Whether or not the “novel coronavirus” was in fact a highly lethal pathogen, it was a military threat because it was a potential bioweapon, and therefore it required a military-style response: strict lockdowns in anticipation of Warp Speed vaccine development.
Furthermore, all of the seemingly nonsensical and unscientific policies – including mask mandates, mass testing and quarantines, using case counts to determine severity – were imposed in the service of the singular goal of fomenting fear in order to induce public acquiescence with the lockdown-until-vaccines policy.
And once the national security authorities were in charge, the entire biodefense industrial complex, consisting of national security and intelligence operatives, propaganda/psy-op (psychological operations) departments, pharmaceutical companies and affiliated government officials and NGOs assumed leadership roles.
Much research is needed to unearth more evidence in support of these hypotheses. The work continues.
World Geostrategic Insights interview with Eric Denécé on an alleged totalitarianism of the Western media in presenting the war in Ukraine, the propaganda war machine set up by the Russians, Americans, and Ukrainians, and the prospects for an end to the conflict.
Eric Denécé, PhD, HDR, is the Director and Founder of the French Centre for Intelligence Studies (CF2R). During his career, he previously served as: Naval Intelligence Officer (analyst) within the Strategic Evaluation Division at the Secretariat Général de la Défense Nationale (SGDN); Sales Export Engineer of Matra Defense; Director for Corporate Communications of NAVFCO (French Naval Defence Industry Advisory Group); Founder and Managing Director of Argos Engineering and Consulting Ltd, a Competitive Intelligence consulting company.
Q1 – On Wikipedia, you are presented as “pro-Putin” and a “transmitter of his disinformation”. You are ostracized because of your statements on the war in Ukraine, such as “Responsibility for this appalling conflict is widely shared, and Ukrainian and Western provocations cannot be minimized or passed over in silence …. It is a conflict that should have been avoided and in which all actors involved, directly or indirectly, bear their share of responsibility.” Of course, your statements may be highly questionable, but it should be legitimate to express them. In this regard you also denounced that “the Western media have succeeded in establishing a real media totalitarianism, which aims to silence any dissenting voice, to prevent any criticism of Kiev, in particular by systematically passing off those who criticize its actions and those of the Americans as pro-Russian.” Have we really entered a totalitarianism of thought? Is freedom of expression, typical of western democracies, becoming a collateral casualty of war?
A1 – This is a very important issue. There is indeed in the presentation of this conflict, a real media totalitarianism of the West. As we observe every day, almost all the Western media and politicians have taken up the cause of Ukraine since 24 February 2022.
But in reality it started as early as the events of 2014 and the real coup that took place in Kiev against Yanukovych. While there was nothing respectable about this man and he was notoriously corrupt – even Vladimir Putin did not like him – he had been legitimately elected in an election supervised and validated by OSCE observers. Maidan is therefore the overthrow of a legal and legitimate regime with the support of Europe and the United States, less than a year before a new election that would have likely removed him from power. This illegal act led to Moscow’s reaction, which re-annexed Crimea to its territory. Similarly, it was Kiev’s discriminatory actions and then its military operations against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass that provoked the Russians to step in. To deny these facts is to subscribe to a Western narrative that totally distorts historical reality.
Similarly, if Russia clearly attacked Ukraine at the beginning of 2022, it did so following a long process of American provocations (refusal to suspend the extension of NATO to the East, refusal to negotiate with Moscow a new security architecture in Europe) and Ukrainian provocations (launching of the offensive in the Donbass on 17 February). Washington knew that Ukraine was a “red line” for the Russians and that they would react. The United States is therefore just as responsible for this conflict as Moscow.
Of course, when one says such things, one is immediately accused of being pro-Russian and of relaying Kremlin propaganda. This is the argument with which Western politicians and media disqualify all those who try to present a version of the facts much closer to reality than their propaganda.
However, I do not seek to defend Russia, but to produce an analysis as objective as possible of the situation in order to find ways out of the crisis. It also seems essential to me to alert the public opinion on the major manipulation of the information which we are witnessing because of the American and Ukrainian Spin Doctors. But the latter and their European relays (politicians, media, pro-Ukrainian activists) do not want this discourse to be audible and are energetically working to stifle it.
I was a young intelligence officer during the Cold War and I have no illusions about the totalitarian Soviet system against which we fought and which collapsed.
However, in the last thirty years, things have changed. Russia is no longer the USSR. Yet everything is done to ensure that we continue to analyze it through the old prism of the Cold War. Thus, it is necessary to note that for thirty years, the West has not ceased to scorn the Russians, to lie to them, to impose sanctions on them and to give them lessons in “democracy”, while not applying them itself.
The vocation of an intelligence officer is to describe the world as it is and not as he would like it to be. This is why we are often qualified as Cassandras and not listened to by politicians. I make this quote from Jean Jaurès (Discours à la jeunesse, 1903) my own:
“Courage is going for the ideal and understanding the real…Courage is seeking the truth and telling it. Courage is not to suffer the law of the triumphant lie that passes and not to echo, with our soul, our mouth and our hands, the imbecilic applause and the fanatical booing.”
The example of the Ukrainian crisis is a perfect illustration. I have no doubt that in the years or decades to come, history will show that this crisis was deliberately provoked by the United States to weaken Moscow and that the vassalized Europeans obediently followed them to the detriment of their own interests.
Q2 – War propaganda is the use of true or false information to manipulate public opinion and evoke strong emotional reactions, such as fear, anger, guilt, admiration or outrage. It has been used throughout history, and particularly since World War 1, as a key tool of warfare and is also widely used by both sides in the conflict in Ukraine. According to a widespread narrative, Russia has perfected and uses an aggressive propaganda and misinformation machine through media control, censorship, socials, trolls, etc. Less emphasis, however, is given to the Ukrainian side’s war propaganda, which seems to have been very effective in gaining Western support. What is your opinion on the information and disinformation warfare in the Ukrainian conflict and propaganda techniques used by the warring sides? While the final outcome on the battlefield still seems uncertain, can we say that there is already a winner in the propaganda war?
A2 – War propaganda actually has even older origins. Julius Caesar already used it in the first century BC; Catholics and Protestants made extensive use of it during the European wars of religion and Napoleon and his British adversaries understood its importance. However, it has developed considerably with the entry of our societies into the information age since the mid-1990s. While propaganda and disinformation were for a long time mainly the work of totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist Soviet Union), they are now systematically practiced by the United States, which prefers to speak of “information warfare”. We could observe this during the first Gulf War (1991), the NATO aggression against Serbia (1999), the invasion of Iraq (2003) in violation of the UN Security Council decision, the interventions in Libya and Syria (2011) and finally, the Ukrainian crisis (2014 and 2022). There has been a shift in their use over the past thirty years: propaganda and disinformation are used as much – if not more – by Western “democracies” as by authoritarian regimes. The United States, having a great deal of control over the world’s means of communication – both the channels and their content – orient the presentation of facts to their advantage in order to achieve their political objectives.
Therefore, to say that today Russian propaganda is raging is to smile. While it is undeniable that Moscow seeks to present the facts to its advantage, its actions have nothing in common with the real information war machine implemented by the Americans and the Ukrainians. For the first time in history, “democracies” lie and misinform more than authoritarian regimes, whether we like it or not.
In particular, we assume – obviously wrongly – that everything the Russians say is a lie and must be systematically rejected, but that everything the Ukrainians say is the pure truth and cannot be questioned. This is abysmally bad faith, but its purpose is to prevent any diplomatic resolution of this conflict, because one does not negotiate with a demonized opponent.
No one sanctioned the United States for having caused the death of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants through inhumane sanctions to make Baghdad comply, nor for having invaded Iraq in 2003 despite the UN veto and for having created chaos in that country. Nobody criticizes them either for the numerous collateral victims caused by their indiscriminate military interventions in the name of the “war on terrorism”, nor for having legally re-established torture and for having engaged in it on a large scale with the help of their allies…
But paradoxically, the West blames the Russians for blocking the export of Ukrainian wheat – information that is not even confirmed. All this reminds of the parable of the straw and the beam…
Q3 – How do you think this conflict will end? Is there still room for a ceasefire and diplomatic solution, and under what conditions? Or, as you recently stated, “the folly of politicians will drag us into a nuclear war”?
A3 – For the moment, it is necessary to distinguish the situation of the four actors involved.
For the United States, which set this trap for Russia in the hope of destabilizing it quickly, it is a half-victory. Washington has not achieved its main goal, but it has succeeded in domesticating Western Europe and making it an appendage of NATO. In addition, the United States has succeeded in permanently weakening competing European economies and is in the process of wiping out the Old World’s defense industry. However, the economic situation on the other side of the Atlantic is also very difficult (inflation), which may well lead to the defeat of the war-mongering Democrats in the mid-term elections in early November.
For Russia, which knowingly fell into the trap set by Washington, this is also a half-victory. Militarily, its initial action was partly a failure and it did not manage to win a decisive victory over the Ukrainian forces. Moreover, it is now cut off from Europe. However, it is not weakened as the West had hoped. Its economy is holding up very well, its revenues are growing despite the sanctions, many countries are refusing to associate themselves with Western policy and its internal cohesion has not suffered. Moreover, its army is far from being in disarray and time is on its side in the theater of operations.
For the European states, it is a major defeat, which has increased their dependence and their submission to the United States. Obedient to the American diktat, the countries of the Union have imposed sanctions on Moscow which are having a severe impact on their economy. They are therefore clearly playing against their own interests. They no longer have any will of their own, and therefore no sovereignty. Worse, while putting forward their “democratic values”, they have not hesitated to flout them by signing an important gas partnership with Azerbaijan, a bloodthirsty dictatorship which has been demonstrating for years its will to exterminate the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and which has attacked the Republic of Armenia without any noticeable reaction from the international community.
For Ukraine, this is a total defeat. The country is in a deplorable state, its infrastructure is destroyed, many inhabitants have fled abroad, part of its territory is occupied and the number of deaths and injuries in combat is particularly high. However, let us remember that before the beginning of this conflict, Ukraine was already a failed quasi-state, undermined by corruption and criminality, led by elites who – like Zelensky and his entourage – have never stopped enriching themselves to the detriment of the country’s development and the well-being of its population since independence (1991). Playing the Americans’ game has only accelerated the decomposition of this state.
The main event that could, in the short term, lead to a de-escalation, if not an end to the conflict, would be a change in American policy, with the arrival of a Republican majority in Congress. Since the Ukrainian army is totally on Western funding, a reduction or cessation of aid would cause it to collapse in a few weeks, pushing Kiev to negotiate with Moscow.
Finally, I do not believe in a nuclear war. Neither Moscow nor Washington wants it. But there is a risk that Kiev will act rashly to escalate the conflict. However, Russia and the United States are particularly vigilant about the risks of this uncontrollable regime getting out of control.
