By Ray McGovern, Consortium News, 9/5/24

As the drums beat louder and louder about alleged threats from Russia, the Biden administration today blew perilous new life into the debunked and disgraced Russiagate disinformation operation.

Russiagate seems too good of a weapon for the Democrats to give up. Its initial appearance, beginning in 2016, dangerously raised tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.  But in the midst of today’s escalating crisis in Ukraine, a Russiagate repeat recklessly raises risk to insane heights.   

Here’s how The New York Times reported it today:

“The United States on Wednesday announced a broad effort to push back on Russian influence campaigns in the 2024 election, as it tries to curb the Kremlin’s use of state-run media and fake news sites to sway American voters.

The actions include sanctions, indictments and seizing of web domains that U.S. officials say the Kremlin uses to spread propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine, which Russia invaded more than two years ago.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland detailed the actions taken by the Justice Department. They include the indictment of two Russian employees of RT, the state-owned broadcaster, who used a company in Tennessee to spread content, and the takedown of a Russian malign influence campaign known as Doppelgänger.

‘The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political activities or seeks to influence public discourse,’ Mr. Garland said. …

The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information pertaining to foreign interference in an American election.”

Garland testified: “The effort in this case is to affect the preferred outcome of the presidential election. … the Director of National Intelligence has testified that Russia’s preferences have not changed from the preceding election.”

CNN’s Breaking News alert dredged up thoroughly disproven myths of “Russia’s 2016 activity, which included hacking the Democratic National Committee and leaking documents aimed at undercutting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”  

The Lie That Won’t Die

Most Americans (not attentive readers of Consortium News) will believe this recycled drivel from top Justice Department and F.B.I. officials, whose predecessors promoted the same gambit.

As we pointed out four weeks ago in “Decay, Decrepitude, Deceit in Journalism,” thanks to Establishment media, Russiagate continues to survive “like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets.” This, even though the $32 million Robert Mueller investigation found no conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign — a main plank in the Russiagate tale. 

The other main plank, that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers, was also debunked, as we shall get to shortly.

The government’s actions today were preceded by more Russiagate drivel last Saturday from a repeat offender, Michael Isikoff (via Spy Talk). This time around, Russiagate is consequential drivel as it helps grease the skids for war.

In 2017 Isikoff wrote (with David Corn) Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump —  “how American democracy was hacked by Moscow to help Trump” (Amazon); a “most thorough and riveting account” (The New York Times).

It was all, as the British say, bollocks! In fact, a year after the “riveting” book came out, Isikoff had to admit publicly that the “Steele Dossier” and infamous “pee-tape” were “likely false.” He confessed during an interview on Dec. 15, 2018, (with an unsuspecting — and somewhat shocked) admirer.

[See: Michael Isikoff Cuts His Losses at ‘Russian Roulette’]

The Timing of Isikoff’s Confession

Isikoff during the Collision tech conference in Toronto in June 2023. (Vaughn Ridley/Collision via Sportsfile, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

I wondered why Isikoff volunteered his confession at the time (I had thought prematurely). Perhaps there is a clue in what follows:

On Dec. 5, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee took closed-door sworn testimony from Shawn Henry, a top official of the cyber security firm CrowdStrike hired by the F.B.I. to do the forensics on the Democratic National Committee computers. 

Henry testified, we only found out years later, that there was no technical evidence that those DNC emails, which were so embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton when published by WikiLeaks, had been hacked, by Russia or by anyone else.

Did someone privy to that testimony tip Isikoff off, so that he could do a pre-emptive “modified, limited hangout” just 10 days later?

Wait! You did not know about Henry’s sworn testimony? Here’s why. Adam Schiff, then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and the Establishment media have been able to keep that testimony hidden from nearly everyone for almost seven years.

The indignities do not cease. The C.I.A. analyst who wrote the first draft of the meretricious “Intelligence Community Assessment” of Jan. 6, 2017, which was used far and wide to “prove” Russian hacking of the DNC and other offensives, is bragging about the role he played.

Now retired, Michael van Landingham has told his story to Rolling Stone. We dissected it in our last piece. 

The unrepentant Isikoff, just a few months ago, in Jeff Stein’s SpyTalk pushed the (now thoroughly discredited) claim that Russia hacked the DNC emails.

To remind one: those emails showed that, because of DNC and Clinton campaign machinations, Bernie Sanders had as much chance of becoming the 2016 Democratic Party nominee as the proverbial snowball in hell.

The Vampire

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with U.S. President Joe Biden in Kiev, Feb. 20, 2023. (White House/Adam Schultz)

“Russian hacking the DNC” is like a vampire, with no one able to drive a wooden stake into its heart and keep it there. President Barack Obama himself knew it was phony, yet he expelled 35 Russian diplomats for hacking and other alleged meddling in the 2016 election. 

Is Isikoff’s latest redux in SpyTalk a harbinger of more Russophobic brainwashing as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepare a response to Russia prevailing in Ukraine? 

In the piece, Isikoff peddles the dangerous fantasy that Russia is threatening Europe beyond Ukraine, while at the same time saying Russia can’t even win in the Ukrainian “stalemate.”  Isikoff does this in an interview with John Sullivan, a former U.S. envoy to Moscow, who’s just published a new book about his time in the Russian capital. 

He says:

“’This is all about Russian aggression,’ Sullivan continued. ‘It happens to be directed at Ukraine, which is why the point of the spear is sticking into Ukraine, but it won’t end there. And I draw the analogies, many analogies in the book, to the Second World War and the start of the war in the 1930s and the late 30s.’” 

Former President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway coined the expression “alternative facts.” With folks like Isikoff and van Landingham back in the saddle — and outlets like Spy Talk and Rolling Stone willing to promote them — expect as many “alternative facts” from Donkeys as from Elephants.

What is important to bear in mind is that the “alternative facts” about Russia are more dangerous by far, given the extremely high tension between Washington and Moscow.

— Joe Lauria contributed to this story.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a CIA analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

By Michael Brenes, Boston Review, 8/26/24

Michael Brenes teaches history at Yale. His next book, coauthored with Van Jackson, is The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy.

President Biden is fond of saying the United States is at an “inflection point” in world history, whether in regards to fighting climate change and racial inequality, protecting Ukraine and global democracy, navigating a new era of U.S.-China relations, or restoring an economy that benefits the middle class. If Kamala Harris defeats Donald Trump in November, she will inherit these inflection points, along with a foreign policy that is increasingly anachronistic and unproven to confront them. Would the Harris Doctrine simply extend the “Biden Doctrine”?

Philip H. Gordon, Harris’s current national security adviser, is expected to remain in the role if she becomes president. His counterpart, Jake Sullivan—who also served as Biden’s national security advisor when Biden was vice president—has transformed the role unlike any figure since Henry Kissinger. Under Sullivan’s tenure, the National Security Council has further become the most undemocratic yet essential institution of U.S. foreign policy making. He is reportedly the chief architect of Ukraine policy, U.S.-China policy, and America’s industrial policy.

Harris has her own views about a range of foreign policy issues—including Israel/Palestine, a major point of contention in the Democrats’ base—but Gordon exercises a large influence over Harris, and would likely play as significant a role in shaping her administration, as Sullivan has under Biden. “Harris depends heavily on [Gordon’s] advice given his deep experience and knowledge of all the players,” commented the late former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, in December 2023.

Gordon’s career, as well as his voluminous scholarship, reveals someone thoroughly ensconced in the Beltway yet aware of its hallmarks: groupthink and a dearth of self-reflection. His most recent book, Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East (2020), chronicles the history of U.S efforts to depose leaders in the Middle East. It is also a parable for policymakers. In seeking to overthrow dictators, Gordon documents, the United States has perennially misjudged its capabilities, acted with impunity, and substituted good intentions for careful, well-developed strategy. “The U.S. policy debate about the Middle East suffers from the fallacy that there is an external American solution to every problem, even when decades of painful experience suggest that this is not the case,” he writes. And regime change is the worst “solution.”

Given Harris’s nomination, Losing the Long Game is more than a good history of a failed policy; it offers a window into how Gordon could shape Harris’s foreign policy, particularly on the Middle East. Some see grounds for cautious optimism that things may change for the better. Are we at a potential inflection point in U.S. foreign policy itself?

Gordon’s career is unique but not an anomaly, in many ways reflecting an earlier history of foreign policy making in Washington. The Cold War created a pipeline between academia and government, a demand for so-called “defense intellectuals.” Policymakers looked for experts to assume control over a potential nuclear war and to provide reasoned analysis. Persistent Cold War dilemmas—how to win a nuclear war, how to obtain technological superiority over the enemy—encouraged input from academics.

Social scientists had a conspicuous influence in the White House during this period. As David Halberstam memorably documented, President John F. Kennedy consulted with the “best and the brightest” from Harvard, turning to young academics like Kissinger and McGeorge Bundy for recommendations on how to deal with the Soviets. Subsequent presidents followed Kennedy’s lead, recruiting what former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (quoting Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.) called “eggheads” into the ranks of the national security establishment. Men like Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzeziński—the latter a counselor to Lyndon Johnson and later Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor—began their careers as Ivy League stars. This became a common pattern. In recent years, figures like Condoleezza Rice and Susan Rice (no relation)—both PhDs—did the same, becoming advisors to candidates-turned-presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively.

Gordon has followed a similar trajectory. He earned a PhD in international relations and international economics from Johns Hopkins in 1991, writing a dissertation on the legacy of French President Charles De Gaulle’s assertive foreign policy that Gordon revised into his first book, A Certain Idea of France: French Security Policy and the Gaullist Legacy (1993). Gordon turned his expertise in European affairs into a position in the Clinton administration as director for European affairs in the late 1990s. He served a similar role in Obama’s presidency as the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs during Obama’s first term before becoming special assistant to the president and coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf region from 2013 to 2015.

In the period between the Clinton years and the Obama years, Gordon was a senior fellow at Brookings and wrote regular reviews for Foreign Affairs and several books on international relations. He returned to the Council of Foreign Relations in 2015, staying there throughout the Trump presidency. He then became a foreign policy advisor to Harris during her 2020 campaign before taking up his current post.

The presidency of George W. Bush marked a turning point in Gordon’s thinking. Until the early 2000s he had produced work almost exclusively aimed at other academics; the Iraq War made him more of public commentator and critic. While many in the Democratic establishment backed Bush’s war without hesitation, Gordon was more cautious. Writing in Foreign Affairs two months before the invasion, he offered an oblique criticism of Bush’s heedless rush to invade, hoping that the president would do more to recruit Europeans.

After the invasion, Gordon condemned Bush’s foreign policy in stronger terms. A year into the occupation, he wrote that the “war in Iraq was a significant distraction from the war on terror” if Bush’s goal was to target the “direct threat from global terrorism.” The war could only succeed, Gordon contended, if it brought about a “transformation of the Middle East,” but that outcome was unlikely—and would take significant international resources to accomplish.

Gordon reiterated this claim in his 2004 book Allies at War, coauthored with Jeremy Shapiro. The particular way the U.S. went about deposing Saddam Hussein had alienated European allies to the detriment of global security, Gordon and Shapiro argued. Differences between the United States and Europe on how to wage a “war on terror” and what constituted threats to global security marred the system of alliances, but it was the “philosophies, personalities, decisions, and mistakes of the leaders who happened to be in office in 2001–2003 that led to the depth of the transatlantic clash over Iraq.” Both the United States and European powers could make “wrong choices” that might fracture transatlantic alliances in the future, but the differences were not irreconcilable, and harmony lay beyond the “the caricature of unilateral and militaristic America and a pacifist Europe.”

In a 2006 article, as Iraq descended into sectarian violence, Gordon celebrated the end of the “Bush revolution” in U.S. foreign policy—the doctrine of “pre-emption” as the basis for U.S. strategy. The objective of building a thriving, democratic state in Iraq had not only failed but likely been impossible to achieve. The war had also overwhelmed other issues at home and abroad. “By overreaching in Iraq, alienating important allies, and allowing the war on terror to overshadow all other national priorities,” Gordon wrote, “Bush has gotten the United States bogged down in an unsuccessful war, overstretched the military, and broken the domestic bank.” Even if Bush faced new terrorist threats, or anxiety about prospective terrorist attacks on the home front, “the scenario whereby dictatorships start falling like dominoes and the United States feels rich, powerful, and right is highly desirable but unlikely to unfold anytime soon.”

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Gordon expanded this critique in Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World (2007), which took Bush to task for squandering America’s “reputation” and “legitimacy” as a global protector. America’s history in the Global South certainly made this an overstatement, but Gordon was right that the September 11 attacks had generated nearly universal sympathy and goodwill toward the United States, which needed to adopt a policy of “maintaining America’s strength, cohesion, and appeal” beyond the use of force, the book concluded. Engaging in diplomacy with Middle Eastern countries, reducing America’s dependency on foreign oil, and avoiding threat inflation were safer alternatives. The United States could not win a war on terror, Gordon concluded, but it could develop a “new strategy for confronting the terrorist challenge”—including a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis, diplomacy that would lead to the “containment” of Iran, a secure Iraq and Afghanistan, greater outreach to Turkey as stabilizing force in the region, and a shift away from a militarized, bloated homeland security apparatus.

In all this, Gordon presaged Obama’s foreign policy. Obama felt that U.S. foreign policy had lost its focus in Iraq, that its misadventures were symptoms of overstretch—in short, that the United States had not curated its conflicts well. The president outwardly defined his foreign policy around limits, about dealing with the “world as it is.” Four months into his first term, Obama said “I do know with certainty that we can and will defeat Al Qaida,” but he avoided using the term “war on terror,” instead describing “a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.” Losing the Long Game shows that Obama did not always live up to this vision of limits for U.S. policy in the Middle East. In Gordon’s narrative, Obama is part of the problem and hardly exceptional.

The book presents readers with outcomes they already know: American strategy for the Middle East has failed. It is not a holistic narrative of U.S. foreign policy in the region but a history of “regime change”—efforts to nation build and steer history in an American direction—and why it has failed to serve U.S. interests. Gordon offers a chronological narrative of seven case studies, moving from the 1953 coup in Iran to Afghanistan (the Soviet, then American invasion), Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The names and contexts change, but as Gordon sees it, the origins and results are the same. Regime change should remain an option for U.S. policymakers, he concludes, but it should never be indulged, as it too often fails to consider the “inherently high costs, unexpected consequences, and insurmountable obstacles.”

This is a persuasive critique of regime change, but in the end the book is an indictment of the character of policymakers, not the history or structure of U.S. foreign policy itself. As Gordon sees it, the United States does not invade countries because of material pressures stemming from its large military, say, or because it possesses unrivaled power, but because the “temptation” to overthrow a regime becomes too great to the point that policymakers ignore other options.

Indeed, Gordon blames regime change on the hubris of foreign policy leaders, who he sees as too consumed by American exceptionalism and wishful thinking and too ignorant of the histories and cultures of the regions they invaded or intervened in. His portrait of Iraq policy is devastating in this regard; he shows that most of the figures overseeing the 2003 invasion and occupation did not speak Arabic, did not understand the tensions and histories between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, or they had too much faith that a democratic government could emerge from political protest. Even when the United States did not invade countries to depose leaders, as in the cases of Iran and Libya, or failed to overthrow dictators, as in Syria, Gordon argues that the results created “unanticipated and unwelcome consequences.” U.S. leaders lacked the necessary foresight and the information they needed to realize it would not work, since “expertise is in short supply.”

The upshot, in Gordon’s account, is that we must recognize that foreign policy is made by people who share enduring traits of human frailty: egoism, overconfidence, and incuriosity. Americans are inclined toward optimism, toward utopian plans, but this is the handmaiden of a disastrous foreign policy if it is not checked by a severe, rigorous, and strategic realism. As Gordon sees it, the institutions of U.S. power are not in themselves wrong; it is the people who run them who make them fall short of their promise. Staff them with better leaders, those inclined to make more humble, cautious decisions, and we’ll have better policy.

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Reading Losing the Long Game provides hints on how a Harris administration might diverge from the Bush and Obama eras, but what does it say about a remaking of foreign policy? After all, Biden has avoided regime change, has extricated the United States from Afghanistan—the last “forever war” of the post–9/11 era—and boasts (misleadingly) that “the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.”

Gordon’s worldview defies easy categorization, departing from the traditional foreign policy “Blob.” He does not believe, as Biden seems to, that U.S. power is always a force for good, or that the United States invariably falls on the “on the right side of history,” as Sullivan has said and sought to be. On the contrary, Gordon thinks the “good” must be demonstrated. He also believes the United States has a historical role to play in world affairs and wants it to be a catalyst for democracy, but the devil is in the details. If the United States must act to help others—and it should, Gordon thinks—it must do so judiciously, wary of unintended consequences. Above all, he fears events that the United States cannot control even if it wanted to, and he seeks to avoid “mission creep” or unnecessary escalation.

His disgust for escalation may offer insight into how a Harris administration would approach war in Gaza. Gordon wrote in 2015 that it was impossible for Israel to “remain a secure Jewish and democratic state—at peace with its neighbors—if it tries to govern the millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.” But nearly a year into Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks—with tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed, Gaza totally devastated, and some Israeli leaders declaring intent to reoccupy Gaza permanently—that is where Israel is headed now.

If Gordon adhered to his conclusions in Losing the Long Game, a Harris administration would work to avoid wider wars in the Middle East. That would mean rejecting moves to escalate the war—whether by Israel, Hamas, or Hezbollah—and prioritizing a political resolution. It would mean not just telling the Israelis that winning a war on terrorism is futile but actively discouraging Israel’s own self-described war on terror. All this would require the United States to change course from its current direction of preparing for regional conflict and giving unconditional material and ideological support to Israel’s war plans.

Whether such change is in the cards is uncertain, but some movement seems possible. Harris has publicly opposed an arms embargo against Israel and refused to repudiate Biden’s Israel policy, but she has privately criticized it. She has talked over protesters at campaign events but has also called the destruction and death in Gaza a “catastrophe.” Gordon has used similar language, as he believes a two-state solution must remain the “ultimate goal,” as he put it in a speech delivered in Israel at the Herzliya Conference on Israeli security in June—where he also did not refrain from calling “settlement expansion, settler violence and other destabilizing activities on the West Bank . . . counterproductive to peace.”

The thrust of Gordon’s remarks is that Israel’s current war now runs contrary to its own “long-term security” and the stability of the Middle East. “The reality,” he said, “is that there is no enduring defeat of Hamas without a credible governance and security alternative in Gaza—as we in the United States learned the hard way from our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.” But the government of Benjamin Netanyahu does not see it that way, and a month after the Herzliya Conference, just before Netanyahu’s trip to the United States, the Knesset voted overwhelmingly for a resolution stating that Palestinian statehood would pose an “existential threat” to Israel. What actions a Harris administration, with Gordon’s counsel, might take in the face of this intransigence remains to be seen.

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Gordon’s views have earned him the moniker of “progressive” in some corners. To reject the idea that the United States cannot make the world in its image—that it does not have a solution to every problem, that short-term solutions create long term problems—makes one a progressive in Washington’s national security circles, but the characterization is not quite accurate. Most foreign policy progressives embrace some form of restraint or retrenchment of U.S. power. But as Gordon sees it—and as most in Washington see it—the United States can have global engagement or global withdrawal; there is only internationalism or isolationism, and though the United States has erred through policies such as regime change, it must continue to exercise its power as the world’s global leader.

The orientation evident in Gordon’s writings is a pastiche of idealism and realism, a propensity for global stasis with the hope that the world can be remade through better, more reasoned leadership. He rejects the cold realism promulgated by balance-of-power advocates such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt as well as the anti-imperialism of the left. “I do not share the view, often expressed both by Trump himself and by some of his critics on the left, that the United States has little at stake in the Middle East,” Gordon writes in the introduction of Losing the Long Game.

It would be more accurate to call Gordon a pragmatic internationalist, for whom foreign policy must be conducted with inhibition and reason and must properly align means and ends. Gordon is sensitive to what can go wrong in U.S. foreign policy, to the “long game”—the unforeseen yet predictable contingencies that can jeopardize U.S interests. He endorses the well-worn premises of U.S. national security, yet he expresses a persistent disappointment in its architects. In short, he is an insider with empathy for the outsider. Above all, his writings and policy record reveal a faith in liberal internationalism and the promise of American power—a faith chastened by bad outcomes but unwilling to deny the potential for better results.

In this chastened faith, Gordon is not exactly a typical representative of the national security apparatus, but he does have counterparts. His views are similar to those of Obama foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes, who belatedly accepted in 2017 what Gordon has argued since 2003: the United States cannot construct democracy in the name of stability or will it in existence. At the same time, Gordon thinks we cannot give up on influencing world affairs—that is, that “there are often practical things that the United States can and should do to reduce conflict, alleviate suffering, promote prosperity, deter atrocities, and advance political reform.”

But doing “the practical things” on a global scale is a much more delicate exercise than even Gordon and other reason-minded liberal internationalists have acknowledged. The United States has proven to be reliably bad at making hegemony more benevolent or effective. The problem is not the people who oversee U.S. foreign policy but the structures of American power themselves—its global archipelago of military bases, the budgets and largesse of the national security state, the relentless militarization of America’s foreign policy. The idea that primacy can be improved—without recourse to international law or multilateral institutions—is historically blind.

In this respect, it is notable that Rhodes has now crossed a bridge that Gordon has not. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Rhodes argues that the United States cannot afford to retain primacy in a world—including much of the Global South—that no longer wants it. Biden has carried out his foreign policy with “one foot in the past, yearning nostalgically for American primacy, and one foot in the future, adjusting to the emerging world as it is.”

A Harris administration that rejects great power competition with China (which has intensified under Biden), that gives up on pursuing primacy for the sake of it, that prioritizes justice over unbridled military power, would truly be a departure from precedent. The world, including much of the Global South, is looking for relief from a warming planet, from rampant inequality and exploitation, from great powers that disregard the futures of the less fortunate. The United States has a role to play in addressing these problems too. But holding onto American primacy to resolve them is not realistic.

Russia Matters, 9/3/24

A decisive change in the course of the war is unlikely if U.S. and its allies permit Ukraine to use Western-made systems for deep strikes inside Russia, according to Stephen Biddle of Columbia University. If given such permission, Ukraine could strike distant logistical and command targets, including even the Kremlin, and defense enterprises “would reduce the efficiency of Russia’s offensives,” Biddle writes in FA. In addition, “damaging factories or infrastructure inside Russia” in such strikes “might help boost Ukrainian morale… But even if the West lifts its restraints on Ukrainian deep strike capability, the consequences are unlikely to include a decisive change in the trajectory of the war,” he argued shortly before U.S. was reported to be considering transfer of long-range missiles to Ukraine.³ For one, deep strike systems are expensive, while their precision guidance systems are vulnerable to disruption by countermeasures. In addition, Ukraine would need to deploy its new capabilities on a large scale and all at once, which would be problematic, according to Biddle. Thus, “Kyiv’s partners should now ask whether the modest military benefits are worth the escalatory risk,” Biddle writes of deep strike systems.  

RT, 8/19/24

As the US government works overtime to stigmatize any journalism possessing connectivity with Russia, the world slides dangerously down a path defined by a Russophobic US-driven agenda that leads toward the inevitability of conflict, and the probability of nuclear war.

When the FBI executed a search warrant on my residence on August 7, they were singularly focused on my professional relationship (I am a self-employed journalist) with the Russian government, and in particular, RT, the widely recognized brand name of Russia Today, a media company founded by the autonomous non-profit organization TV-Novosti in April 2005.

According to the FBI, the US government was concerned that my activities fell under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

The FBI has also searched the Virginia home of Dmitry Simes, a veteran Russian-American journalist who currently resides in Moscow where he helps moderate a popular political program, ‘The Big Game’, on Channel 1.

While the FBI has not publicly commented on the raid on Simes’ home, it is most likely due to similar concerns over FARA compliance.

I have been an external contributor (i.e., contactor) to RT since April 2020. Since the initial contract was signed, I have written numerous articles and produced hundreds of videos for which I have been compensated financially in accordance with the terms set forth in the agreements between myself and RT. As stipulated in the signed agreements, I am solely responsible for the content of the work provided.

At no time have I entered into any agreement, written or oral, or have reached any understanding, formal or informal, that I am responsive to the direction or control of either RT/TV-Novosti or the Russian government.

Indeed, the agreement between myself and RT stipulates that I am responsible for determining the topics that will be covered in the content I produce, although as is the case in any editorial/producer relationship with ‘talent’, I have been asked to provide content that is responsive to breaking news.

I am a freelance journalist. This is the life of a freelance journalist.

Nothing more, nothing less.

This relationship is like that which I have as an outside contributor to other journalistic outlets, including TruthDig, the American Conservative, Consortium News, the Washington Spectator, and Energy Intelligence, all of which have published my work on a regular basis during the same period in which I produced content for RT.

In all cases, I am solely responsible for the content I produce. There is, of course, a collaborative relationship with the editors of all these publishing outlets, some more intense/heavy than others. This is the normal reality faced by every journalist in the world.

I can say without fear of contradiction that the editorial ‘touch’ of RT is the lightest of any publisher I have dealt with – there is the standard follow-up questioning on sourcing of information, and some massaging of language for clarity. On a few occasions (I can count them on one hand), RT has turned down articles I have submitted for publication. In every instance, the topics dealt with US domestic issues, and the editors were concerned about being seen as buying into unfounded conspiracies.

How utterly irresponsible of them!

The specific compensation received for work published is confidential in accordance with the terms of the agreement I signed with RT (the FBI seized physical and electronic copies of this agreement, and I have in the past provided copies of the agreement to the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) or their proxies operating within the US banking system.) But I can say this – it is within the industry norm, slightly more than some publishers, and slightly less than others. And in no case can it be considered exorbitant – the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, all of whom have published my opinion pieces in the past, all pay significantly more than does RT.

This reality must be disappointing to the FBI and the Department of Justice, which, through their questioning, seemed caught up in a working theory that I was a controlled asset of RT and, by extension, the Russian government. Their conspiracy theories extended into the person of my wife, Marina, who was questioned by a pair of FBI agents at her place of work at the same time the FBI conducted its search of our residence. The agents showed Marina a copy of an email she had sent to me back in late 2020/early 2021, where she listed the articles that I had published for RT for each month.

I was paid on a monthly billing cycle, with the amount calculated based upon the number of articles published in a given month. On occasion, there would be discrepancies, where my count of articles published did not align with the money paid in compensation. To assist me in working out these discrepancies, Marina would generate a list of articles published by publication date, so that I could more coherently communicate with RT.

“Do you direct the work of your husband?” the FBI asked my wife. “Do you organize his work?”

The answer was self-evident, as my wife informed the FBI.

I am my own boss.

The FBI was also interested in the payment vehicle used by RT to compensate me. The method agreed to contractually was a wire transfer to be made monthly based upon the work published. For this, I provided my banking information, including SWIFT code.

Following the commencement of the Special Military Operation by Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, this method became difficult because of the sanctioning of Russian banks by the US, denying these banks access to the SWIFT system that controls money transfers globally and, most importantly in my case, into the US.

RT developed workarounds which used unsanctioned third parties to execute the wire transfers. Over time, RT made use of two such intermediaries. I have always been totally transparent about this payment method. Indeed, when my bank began blocking payment on instructions from their internal OFAC enforcement units, I reached out to the bank to resolve the issue. Part of the resolution measures agreed to was that I provided the OFAC enforcement unit with copies of my contractual relationships showing that the money received was related to contracted work. This method worked but was very time consuming and inconvenient – wire transfers were often returned to the sender in whole or in part because of the delay in processing the submitted paperwork, which took place every time a payment was received.

I contacted OFAC directly to complain, citing harassment and First Amendment issues, and was informed that they had nothing to do with it. The problem, it seemed, was overzealous employees at the bank itself (the OFAC enforcement unit was an in-house entity, with no formal relationship with the US government or OFAC.)

The solution was simple – I switched banks. In making the application to my new bank, I was transparent about international wire transfers that they would expect, what country these transfers would originate from, roughly in what amounts the transfers would be, and for what purpose (writing.)

The bank in question was USAA, with which I had a relationship dating back to 1984 when I was commissioned as an officer in the US Marines. Last year, USAA ended its relationship with me without warning, closing my bank account and terminating homeowner and auto insurance policies that I had with them dating back four decades.

I opened a new account with my current bank. Once again, I was fully transparent in the application process as to the source and reason for incoming wire transfers.

The FBI, in questioning me, provided the names of the two intermediaries used by RT to make the wire transfers of my compensation. I provided accurate answers to all their questions concerning these entities and my relationship with them.

I have no doubt that the US government will continue to make it difficult, and perhaps impossible, for RT to compensate external contributors based in the United States, including myself, for their work.

This is harassment under color of law.

But under no circumstances does it make the work, or any compensation paid to me for this work, a violation of the law.

And under no circumstances does being paid for my outside contributions to RT violate the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

I have been lambasted for publishing my work in RT.

Several US-based publishers, including TruthDig and the American Conservative, have terminated their relationship with me because I also contributed to RT – this after my writing won an award for TruthDig and one of my articles was the most-viewed for the year for the American Conservative. I had just started what was supposed to be a stint as a regular contributor for Responsible Statecraft (RS) when some of their funders balked at having someone who also wrote for RT writing for them (I had just published my first article, only to have it removed from the RS website without warning. RS was willing to pay me for the article in question, but I let them know under no circumstances would I accept money from their organization.)

One of the reasons I enjoy contributing to RT is the global diversity of their audience. But I also appreciate the relative purity of their message – in a world where the US and its compliant minions in the controlled Western press work overtime to manipulate audiences into accepting at face value and without question the American-driven narrative, RT and other non-Western news outlets provide alternatives which are fact-driven.

In March 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton complained about the US “losing the information war” to nations like Russia amongst English-speaking audiences around the world.

The truth, when seen from the perspective of an American secretary of state, hurts.

I have had extensive intimate experience with the US mainstream media dating back to my time as a weapons inspector in Iraq. I bore personal witness to US government officials leaving important Security Council meetings early so they could brief reporters from the New York Times, who would then publish a front-page story about the meeting which bore no resemblance whatsoever to the reality of the meeting and reflected every talking point of the United States.

How did I know this?

Because the Security Council meeting dealt with issues surrounding the inspections I was responsible for leading in Iraq, and with briefings that I helped write and provide to the members present. I was there when the US official walked out, and I knew who he was going to meet.

I was also present when the CIA worked with CNN to make a documentary about the work of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. I was one of several inspectors whose stories served as the centerpiece of the documentary. Moreover, I was the point of contact between the CIA and CNN when it came to the release of U-2 imagery and other intelligence-related information to CNN to be used in the documentary.

I worked for NBC News in the months after I resigned from my position with the United Nations. I was an on-air analyst who often appeared with Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams. I would work with NBC News to turn raw news feeds into finished products ready for on-air broadcast. I saw firsthand how NBC manipulated the news to fit pre-conceived notions instead of reporting it as is. I was eventually released from my contract when National Security Adviser Sandy Berger objected to questions being asked of him by NBC White House correspondent Claire Shipman, indicating that he knew I was behind those questions.

NBC had the choice: Defend journalistic integrity, or cave in to White House pressure.

They caved.

After 9/11, I was contracted by Fox News as an on-air analyst for six months, only to have Fox News balk at my assessments which ran counter to the narrative being promulgated by the Bush White House. Fox News decided it was better to pay me and keep me off the airwaves (I was exclusive to Fox at the time) than release me and let me speak out.

The contract was not renewed when it expired.

I was briefly courted by CNN in the fall of 2002, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. After being questioned in an in-house forum that brought together the major reporters, hosts, and producers of CNN, I was ‘cleared’ by the senior CNN executives, who proceeded to give me a ‘behind the scenes’ tour of their newsroom.

I was shocked when I was taken to the CNN ‘war room’, where the producers were already working with the Pentagon to embed reporters with military units. My questions about this level of collusion led CNN to lose interest in me shortly thereafter.

The bottom line is this – I have seen the American mainstream media up close and personal.

There is zero integrity when it comes to reporting fact-based truth.

In every instance I experienced, the news organizations of these various media companies were literally subordinated to the US government, taking their talking points directly from either the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon.

In short, these news organizations did not produce news, but rather American propaganda which was designed to deceive the broader American audience about critical issues of war and peace.

The news organizations I observed firsthand were more representative of a state-controlled media than a free press.

And, if called upon to compare and contrast, based upon my own personal experiences, the level of journalistic integrity between these US media outlets and RT, RT wins hands-down.

When it comes to reporting on politically sensitive content, such as the Special Military Operation, I likewise side with RT.

The Biden administration has openly admitted that it purposely declassifies intelligence information it knows to be wrong or misleading so that it can be released to the mainstream media for the purpose of controlling the narrative.

Not for telling the truth.

I have, over the years, had the opportunity to meet and work with several RT journalists and reporters who cover the Special Military Operation.

Every single one has demonstrated impeccable integrity when it comes to reporting the news.

I have also had the opportunity to interface with and interview many of the sources these RT journalists draw upon for their reporting and can say that the assessments I make as an independent analyst often reflect those of the RT journalists.

Not because, as is the case in the United States, we are working from the same government-dictated script – the Russian government has never tried to dictate any narrative to me, nor has RT.

But because both RT and I have an assiduous appreciation for fact-based truth.

Sadly, I can’t say that for any of the mainstream American media organizations I’ve worked with in the past.

My reporting for RT is my own, reflecting my observations and analysis. My most recent reporting from Russia backs this up – a four-part series which RT knew nothing about until I pitched it to them after I completed my most recent trip to Russia.

In writing How the Chechen miracle kick-started the Russian ‘Path of Redemption’, Helping Crimea recover from decades of Ukrainian misrule is a tough but necessary challenge, We are witnessing the bittersweet birth of a new Russia, and Why did it take Russia so long to realize Donbass was worth fighting for?, I provided unique reporting that was unavailable anywhere else in the world – Western media outlets would never allow such reporting to be published on their pages or websites, and Russian news outlets had never seen such reporting from an independent Western perspective.

This is exactly what journalism is supposed to be – hard hitting, probing analysis based upon first-hand observations derived from access to high-level sourcing.

I picked RT as the publisher of these articles because I wanted this reporting to be available not only to a global English-speaking audience, but also to a Russian audience.

This reporting was not the byproduct of close collusion between myself and the Russian government – in fact, when I tried to get official permission to travel to the new territories and Donbass from the Russian Ministry of Defense, I was turned down. It was only because of my persistence, and that of my host, Aleksandr Zyrianov, that I was able to travel to Chechnya, Crimea, the New Territories, and Donbass, and meet with the high-level officials and military officers who feature in my reporting.

Trying to convince a Western audience – be it government officials, journalists, or the consumers of news – that RT is a responsible news organization more committed to telling the truth than their ostensibly ‘free’ Western media counterparts, is a literal mission impossible.

The level of Russophobia that has infected every level of society in the West is mind-boggling. I have been called a shill of Russian President Vladimir Putin more times than I can count, by both the online trolls of the North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO), whose mission is simply to harass any online voice that doesn’t conform to the US/NATO narrative, and ostensibly ‘neutral’ journalists who write for outlets that publish my work. My crime? Reporting accurately on the positions taken by the Russian government – “speaking ‘Putin’”, in the vernacular of my critics.

The consequences of this Russophobia-infected journalism are dire – not only has the ignorance enshrined within the journalism of the West resulted in the destruction of Ukraine, but, if not reversed, is leading the Collective West down the path of inevitable conflict with Russia which would probably end in a general nuclear war.

Trying to head off such a tragic outcome has been the fuel that feeds my work as a journalist these past few years.

And it will continue to fuel my work going forward.

I am grateful to RT for allowing my words to be published and disseminated in both written and video form.

I believe that, in doing so, RT is contributing to the cause of saving the world from the horror of nuclear war.

Even if the Russophobia-infected minds in the Collective West fail to recognize this.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 9/3/24

Little Prospect for Immediate Peace

The general tone of pro-Russian coverage of NATO’s proxy war against Russia over Ukraine continues to be somewhat triumphal, supported by an empirical reality in the battlefields with which western mainstream media are now largely in agreement (perhaps, as one noted, so as to be ready to blame Zelenskiy for the whole sorry mess once Washington has called the whole thing off).

I have explained in a recent post how my immediate instinct is to distrust triumphal reporting, even when substantiated by the empirical “facts on the ground.” That is because I do not believe that anyone or any group, for or against the War or for or against the position of Russia, or Ukraine or the West in the war, is in possession of all of the facts.

There is far less consensus as to how things will turn out from here, with many commentators eager to discern evidence of a movement towards negotiation and a relatively short war, on the one hand, against those who consider the gap between Zelenskiy’s “peace plan” and Russia’s security and other needs absolutely unbridgeable. With Russia now in a more certain position to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk, some think, Russia will be more inclined to consider negotiations.

The main problems with this expectation, as I see it, are as follows:

(1) Russia’s main enemy is not Ukraine by itself, it is Washington and the West, and parties to negotiation need to include all relevant voices;

(2) Russia’s principal concerns are not concerns that it has only with Ukraine, they are concerns that the Global South has with the West; therefore, the substance of negotiations, if they are to be truly successful, cannot just be about Ukraine. Instead, they need to be about the global order and about reform of that global order in a direction that is more polycentrist, less hegemonic, and regulated by a somewhat re-thought and reformed United Nations, a process in which the BRICS could be an extremely useful intermediary. (I note in passing that Turkey’s request to enter the BRICS has now been formalized).

(3) There are no circumstances in which Russia is going to voluntarily agree to give up Crimea and the four oblasts that it has formally enfolded into the Russian Federation; there are live questions as to whether its security needs can be respected without acquisition of Kharkiv, Kiev, Odessa and any other oblasts that separate Novorussiye from the Dnieper;

(4) There are no circumstances in which Russia is going to agree to talk to a Ukrainian delegation appointed by the current regime, which Russia correctly asserts to be an illegitimate and unelected regime, even by the standards of Ukraine’s own constitution. It is a regime that would be booted out of office in the event that martial law would come to an end, and new elections instituted; regime change is a prerequisite. One cannot negotiate or do deals with people like this.

(5) There are no circumstances so far as can currently be seen in which Zelenskiy and his gang are going to voluntarily give up power;

(6) These considerations, therefore, have two consequences. The first (a) is that practically all discussion in the West about possible endings to this war, together with a great deal of discussion in Russia itself, adopts far too narrow a conception as to what this war is really about and what must happen for it to be won or to reach settlement. The second (b) is that because the gulfs between the main parties – Russia (together with China and other major allies in the BRICS), Ukraine, Brussels, Washington and the West generally – are so broad, no successful negotiation is currently practicable, and the war will therefore continue, finishing only whenever Ukraine collapses, amidst serious fissures and fragmentations within the EU and NATO, or the Russian Federation itself collapses.

(7) For the moment, the first of these two scenarios seems the most likely. This largely results from quantitative and qualitative superiority of Russian forces, weapons, manufacturing capability and alliances (including with China and Iran). The longer the war lasts, the more attrition there will be of Ukrainian forces, specifically, and of Western armories more generally. The pace of Western attrition will speed up if Israel manages to coax the US to fight a war on its behalf with Iran; and if the US manages to provoke a war between China and Taiwan. This would present a three-front challenge to the USA at a time when its ability to fight even only one front seems questionable.

(8) Russia has never at any time indicated that its ambitions went beyond the Donbass. Nor was there any sane reason to think that it did. However, the Western reaction to Russian assertion of its security needs has been so extreme (and, to be frank, so extremely fake), so over-the-top, that Russia must now be obliged to consider the entire West as its enemy. Therefore, against all previous indications to the contrary, Russia may now be planning some broader and more durable defense strategy vis-a-vis NATO.

Fragmenting NATO/ Europe amid Liberal Authoritarianism

As discussed in my previous post, three of the EU’s major powers are in deep water, struggling to climb out of it by ever more authoritarian means.

Britian nears recession, its new government proclaims that ten years of austerity are necessary, yet doubles down on Ukraine and resorts increasingly with dire, repressive measures to crush protests against this clear insanity.

The French President, in the face of an election disaster for his party has manouvered his chips to keep out of power the one party (that of Marine Le Pen) that won the most seats in the general election, and is coopting fragments of the Left alliance to work with his Party and to keep the other fragments out of power.

In Germany, a recently formed party, the AfD, typically described by its Establishment opposition – the SPD (in power) and CDU (principal opposition) – as “far right,” has won over 30% of the votes in two States – Thuringia and Saxony. A new Left party, the BSW, formed only six months ago as a splinter of the traditional Left party Die Linke, and led by Sahr Wagenknecht has won 16% of the votes in Thuringia and 12% of the votes in Saxony.

The AfD and the BSW together, therefore, represent almost half the voting population of these two, formerly East German states. Both parties oppose continuing German participation in the war in Ukraine. A likely alliance in the federal elections of October 2025 between the CDU and BSW (or comparable alliances at several state levels) might therefore force a radical shift in Germany’s stance in the war, and also derail moves by Washington to establish intermediate and long-range nuclear missiles on German soil.

The Battlefields

A Russian Iskander strike with two ballistic missiles struck a military academy in the Central Ukrainian town of Poltava and, according to some reports, also hit a nearby hospital. This has killed over 50 and wounded some 500, according to a source cited at midday today by Dima (i.e. not the 200 I originally saw reported). Poltava is west of the Dnieper. At this time of writing I do not know if all the victims are military or whether, as one might expect, some civilians have also suffered. It was mainly contract soldiers, not cadets, who were hit. The dead included foreign, including several Swedish, instructors, probably assigned there for training courses related to 2 AWACS aircraft that Sweden has gifted Ukraine.

Following Russian strikes elsewhere across Ukraine, there have been reported Iskander explosions in Kharkiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia (where an Iskander destroyed a hotel hosting many foreign instructors). All Russian artillery brigades are now being equipped with Iskander missiles and have the authority to use them.

In southern Donetsk, Russian forces have secured the village of Prechystivka, west of Vuhledar, and have been shelling Urozhaine, Novodonetsk, and Makarivka. From Prechystivka they have advanced north in the direction of Novokrainke, and, as a result, they likely control a large swathe of territory from Novomaiorske up through Prechystivka and Novokrainke, eastwards to Pavlivka. To the northeast of Vuhledar they have taken the South Donbass coalmine together with a nearby stronghold and are poised to enter the eastern outskirts of Vuhledar itself.

In Pokrovsk, Russian forces have moved on Zhelanne Persha, of which they now control 50%. This is east of Lisivko which they took yesterday; they are attacking Ukrainsk nearby to the west, from Dolynivka and Memryk, and poised to move on Zhelanne Druhe, and on Hirnyk to the south. Ukrainian forces have abandoned a swathe of territory that runs from Hstytsynivka in the west to Nevelske in the east and then, moving southwards, to Krasn. In Selydove, Russian forces continue to advance on the town from Mykhailivka to the east and have taken the hospital area. North of Selydove, Russian forces control over a good half of Novohrodivka but there are still significant clashes for control over the western half of the village.

Russian forces are entering deeper into Toretsk, where they have occupied the school area while, to the immediate north, they have established control over Druzba. Russian forces have resumed their offensive towards the center of Chasiv Yar, making new advances and have established a foothold west of Kalinivka to the north of Chasiv Yar, tracing all the way down the western bank of the Kanal to a point south of Kleshchiivka.

South of Siversk, Russian forces have resumed progress towards the taking of Pereizne (they control 50%), and in the very near future are likely to take Fedoriivka to the immediate west. In Kupyansk, Russian forces have moved further from Pishchanne and are within less than two kilometers from the Oskil river at the settlements of Hlushkivka and Kolishnykivka.

In Kursk, there are reports that Russia has recovered a line of villages from Pogrebki down to Malaya Loknya. Dima considers that Ukraine will be forced out of Kursk by the end of the year.

Palestine

Just as consensus accumulates in favor of a triumphal outcome for Russia in Ukraine, there is a gathering unison of pessimistic tone with respect to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. Netanyahu is proving himself impervious to the unrest of a sizable proportion of all of Israel that protests vehemently for a ceasefire that will bring home all the remaining hostages. He is impervious too to the voices in his own army, the IDF, that express concern that they are barely able to defeat Hamas, let alone Hezbollah in Lebanon, or to win a war against Israel [I think he meant to say Iran – NB].

Writing for Antiwar.com, Caitlin Johnson writes of Israeli and western media reaction to the recent deaths of six hostages:

“Israeli strikes killed 47 Palestinians in Gaza in one 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday, receiving not the tiniest fraction of the attention as those six Israeli hostages.Israel is extending its military offensives”

Jeremy Scahill reports today the situation in Jenin:

“For nearly a week, the Israeli military has been laying siege to hospitals in Jenin and other cities in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, severely restricting access to medical care, targeting medical workers and ambulances, and cutting off water and electricity, as part of a massive military offensive in the occupied West Bank, the largest operation  in the Palestinian territory in over two decades.”

For Global Research, Steven Sahiounie writes:

“The Israeli military is attempting to pull Hezbollah into a full-scale regional war, through the massive and continuous airstrikes across the south of Lebanon and into the Bekaa Valley. Only Netanyahu benefits from this plan so that he can remain in power and stay out of jail due to being found guilty of corruption. This is the same reason why Netanyahu has continued to refuse a ceasefire in Gaza, despite the massive losses of Israeli military personnel, equipment, and the economy.”

Tunnels and Missiles

In interview today with Judge Napolitano, Alastair Crooke wonders in amazement how it is that neither Israel nor the West seem to understand just how far the nature of war is changing, in the first place, how sophisticated are the stocks of missiles and drones in the hands both of Hezbollah and, even more, Iran, in the second place and how, thirdly, these weapons and their launch systems are increasingly located underground, often unknown and invisible to their enemy.

The New York Times today carries a long article about the Hamas’ networks of tunnels, especially under Gaza, and puts these forward as the reason why Israel’s progress against Hamas has been so slow. The silly pretence is that for the New York Times this is an amazing discovery! Yet for up to a decade or more, the Times and other western mainstream media have eagerly devoured Israeli propaganda stories about the Hamas tunnels as evidence of how evil and threatening to Israeli security is Hamas.

It is obvious that the tunnels have been a major obsession in Israeli security and military planning and that their existence cannot possibly have been a surprise to anyone. Indeed, one only had to listen to Scott Ritter’s analyses since the beginning of the war to know that Israel was likely biting off more than it could chew. If Ritter knew about the tunnels, certainly everyone else who matters knew as well. Finally, one can observe the usefulness of this “tunnel discourse” as forming the basis of a fake justification for Israeli genocide.