Former CIA director William J. Casey once candidly told U.S. President Ronald Reagan and other aides during a meeting in the White House, “We’ll know when our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false”.

Some have viewed that observation to be a flippant aside not meant to signify actual consequence. Others, however, have contended it had far more deliberate sinister connotations whose scale of public thought-control is a conscious objective.

When one looks at how the conflict in Ukraine and Western relations with Russia are unfolding and the way Western news media are reporting on it, Casey’s words seem to be a grim forewarning.

This week saw lurid claims amplified across the U.S. and Western media of a massacre in the Ukrainian city of Bucha allegedly carried out by Russian troops. The source of those claims was the partisan Ukrainian military associated with the Nazi-infested Azov Battalion. The Azov Battalion whose members openly display Waffen-SS insignia has been trained and weaponized by the United States and other NATO military over the past decade.

There was no attempt by Western media to verify the sensational claims leveled against Russia. They were printed and broadcast with gusto leading to more Western sanctions and weapons supply to Ukraine in support of the Kiev regime. What’s all the more disturbing is that the information purporting to incriminate Russian troops is questionable. The alleged atrocities appear to have occurred several days after Russian forces withdrew from the area.

Moscow claimed that the killings were carried out by the Western-backed Azov regiments in a false-flag provocation to blame Russia. However, Western media have reflexively branded Russian claims as “Kremlin propaganda”. Even Western analysts and alternative media sources have been vilified or censored for daring to challenge the narrative of alleged Russian atrocities. One such independent voice is that of Scott Ritter, the former U.S. Marine Corps officer, who was temporarily banned from social media this week for doing so.

A bitter irony is that this week also saw reports in U.S. media openly admitting that American intelligence services have been knowingly sowing disinformation in the media. Far from feeling shame or contrition, the U.S. intelligence agencies and media are exulting in the practice of “getting ahead” of Russia in “information warfare”.

Some of the disinformation stories admitted include claims that Russia was planning to use chemical weapons in Ukraine; that Russian President Vladimir Putin was being misled by his military generals about the lack of progress in the war; and that Moscow was seeking to obtain weapons supply from China for the war in Ukraine. All the stories are now acknowledged as false. The U.S. media is lying to the public and openly admitting it. But, supposedly, that’s okay because it’s in the name of information warfare against Russia.

Another disinformation story was the claim made in February by the State Department that Russia was preparing to stage false-flag attacks to serve as a pretext for invading Ukraine. When State Department spokesman Ned Price was challenged by reporters at the time to provide hard evidence, he snidely implied they were pushing Russian propaganda. Turns out now though that the State Department was peddling lies planted by its intelligence services.

None of this shocking collusion between supposedly independent news services and the secret intelligence apparatus should be surprising. After all, former CIA director Mike Pompeo bragged in public about how the agency “lied and cheated all the time” like a badge of honor.

We know from decades ago how Operation Mockingbird was an ambitious CIA program to infiltrate all U.S. news media with dutiful editors and reporters as assets.

Frank Wisner, a leading CIA intelligence officer, once marveled at what he referred to as the agency’s influence over media as the “Mighty Wurlitzer”, an apt image of an organ-grinder calling the tune for public discourse and perception.

In a 1977 investigative study by the Washington Post’s Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, it was reported that hundreds of newspapers and broadcasters across the U.S. were recruited in the service of the CIA. The outlets included the supposedly august New York Times down to the provincial newspapers in dusty rural states. Amusingly enough given Bernstein’s earlier insights on public thought-control by the intel apparatus, he later became an advocate of the “Russiagate” hoax concocted by U.S. intel implicating former President Donald Trump as a Russian stooge.

Another formidable source of truth is former senior CIA operative John Stockwell who has given copious testimonies and authored books on how the CIA runs media disinformation campaigns on a massive, worldwide scale.

In Europe, former German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte wrote a tell-all exposé of how the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies recruit staff in all major European media outlets to act as their eyes, ears, and mouths. It is also known that the British state-owned broadcaster, the BBC, was, and perhaps still is, vetted by its national intelligence service, MI5.

While such revelations were known and publicized, it was always a quiet conversation to avoid amplifying scandal for a profession that preens itself as a guardian of independent public interest, freedom of speech and thought, critical of political power, and all sorts of other noble accolades.

It was always a Western conceit to denigrate state propaganda as something that was done in the Soviet Union and in today’s Russia, China, and other alleged “autocratic” states.

How the pot calls the kettle black! The Western media have long been far more guilty of peddling outrageous disinformation in the service of their military-security establishments. The WMD hoax that led to the genocidal war in Iraq in 2003 was perhaps the nadir among countless other disreputable episodes. Further back there was the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident leading to the Vietnam War. More recently there was the alleged but bogus raping campaign by soldiers under Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that led to the NATO bombing of Libya and the murder of Gaddafi in 2011. The NATO bombing of Syria was presaged by widespread false Western media claims of chemical weapons atrocities that were actually carried out by NATO-backed regime-change proxies.

In Ukraine, the war was precipitated by NATO weaponizing a Nazi regime that was attacking ethnic Russian people in the Donbass. Since the war erupted on February 24 after eight years of provocations, the Western media have accused the Russian military of bombing hospitals and theatres and now of executing civilians in cold blood.

This is from the same media who now openly admit to being operatives for disinformation and who appear to have no shame about it. Indeed, they are proudly boasting of their role of deception as somehow noble. Such media are complicit in fueling conflict and war. Their function is to fill the public with ignorance and jingoism in order to bolster the cause of warmongering industries and economies. In this twisted Orwellian climate, to speak the truth is to commit thought-crime and be vilified by those who exalt in lying.

NBC News has a new report out citing multiple anonymous US officials, humorously titled “In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn’t rock solid”.

The officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out “intelligence” about Russia’s plans in Ukraine that is “low-confidence” or “based more on analysis than hard evidence”, or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.

The report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin’s advisors misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.

Psyops in the U.S. targeting the public used to be illegal, even though the way they got around it was to plant stories in the foreign press. But over the last five years beginning with Russiagate & now Ukraine, it is clear that U.S. public is fair game: https://t.co/gcEWoCZbkB

— Ajamu Baraka (@ajamubaraka) April 6, 2022

Excerpt, emphasis mine:

It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.

President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.

It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance.

So they lied. They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true, and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in the western world.

Another example of the Biden administration releasing a false narrative as part of its “information war”:

Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said.

The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said.

On the empire’s claim last week that Putin is being misled by his advisors because they are afraid of telling him the truth, NBC reports that this assessment “wasn’t conclusive — based more on analysis than hard evidence.”

I’d actually made fun of this ridiculous CIA press release when it was uncritically published disguised as a breaking news report by The New York Times:

Breaking News: The most influential newspaper in the English-speaking world routinely passes off CIA press releases as “Breaking News”. https://t.co/aBzhidbozv

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 30, 2022

We’d also had fun with State Department Spokesman Ned Price’s bizarre February impersonation of Alex Jones, where he wrongly claimed that Russia was about to release a “false flag” video using crisis actors to justify its invasion:

US Again Tries To Pass Off Government Assertions As Evidence

“This is the kind of evidence you can’t see. The evidence is invisible.”https://t.co/mEqIsS0cUS

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 4, 2022

Other US government lies discussed in the NBC report were less cute:

In another disclosure, U.S. officials said one reason not to provide Ukraine with MiG fighter jets is that intelligence showed Russia would view the move as escalatory.

That was true, but it was also true of Stinger missiles, which the Biden administration did provide, two U.S. officials said, adding that the administration declassified the MiG information to bolster the argument not to provide them to Ukraine.

So the Biden administration knew it was sending weapons to Ukraine that would be perceived by a nuclear superpower as a provocative escalation, sent them anyway, and then lied about it. Cool, cool, cool.

This NBC report confirms rumors we’ve been hearing for months. Professional war slut Max Boot said via The Council on Foreign Relations think tank in February that the Biden administration had ushered in “a new era of info ops” with intelligence releases designed not to tell the truth but to influence Putin’s decisions. Former MI6 chief John Sawers told The Atlantic Council think tank in February that the Biden administration’s “intelligence” releases were based more on a general vibe than actual intelligence, and were designed to manipulate rather than to inform.

Amazing interview with of the former MI6 chief with the Atlantic Council’s @B_judah (the whole gang present) where the intel goon *admits* that many western “intel leaks” media outlets are dutifully conveying aren’t real leaks but propaganda messages designed to undercut Putin. pic.twitter.com/UOzBxG5F5H

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 17, 2022

And in case you were wondering, no, NBC did not just publish a major leak by whistleblowers within the US government who are bravely exposing the lies of the powerful with the help of the free press. One of the article’s authors is Ken Dilanian, who in 2014 was revealed to have worked as a literal CIA asset while writing for The LA Times. If you see Dilanian’s name in a byline, you may be certain that you are reading exactly what the managers of the US empire want you to read.

So why are they telling us all this now? Is the US government not worried that it will lose the trust of the public by admitting that it is continuously lying about its most high-profile international conflict? And if this is an “information war” designed to “get inside Putin’s head” as NBC’s sources claim, wouldn’t openly reporting it through the mainstream press completely defeat the purpose?

Well, the answer to those questions is where it gets really creepy. I welcome everyone’s feedback and theories on the matter, but as near as I can figure the only reason the US government would release this story to the public is because they want the general public to know about it. And the only plausible reason I can think of that they would want the public to know about it is that they are confident the public will consent to being lied to.

To get a better sense of what I’m getting at, it helps to watch the televised version of this report in which Dilanian and NBC anchor Alison Morris enthuse about how brilliant and wonderful it is that the Biden administration is employing these psychological warfare tactics to mess with Putin’s mind:

The message an indoctrinated NBC viewer will get when watching this segment is, “Isn’t this awesome? Our president is pulling off all these cool 3D chess moves to beat Putin, and we’re kind of a part of it!”

It’s been obvious for a long time that the US empire has been working to shore up narrative control to strengthen its hegemonic domination of the planet via internet censorship, propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and the normalization of the persecution of journalists. We may now simply be at the stage of imperial narrative control where they can begin openly manufacturing the consent of the public to be lied to for their own good.

Just as the smear campaign against Julian Assange trained mainstream liberals to defend the right of their government to keep dark secrets from them, we may now be looking at the stage of narrative control advancement where mainstream liberals are trained to defend the right of their government to lie to them.

The US is ramping up cold war aggressions against Russia and China in a desperate attempt to secure unipolar hegemony, and psychological warfare traditionally plays a major role in cold war maneuverings due to the inability to aggress in more overt ways against nuclear-armed foes. So now would definitely be the time to get the “thinkers” of America’s two mainstream political factions fanatically cheerleading their government’s psywar manipulations.

A casual glance around the internet at what mainstream liberals are saying about this NBC report shows that this is indeed what is happening. In liberal circles there does appear to be widespread acceptance of the world’s most powerful government using the world’s most powerful media institutions to lie to the public for strategic gains. If this continues to be accepted, it will make things a whole lot easier for the empire managers going forward.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

In part 1 of this series Fact Checking the Fact Checkers, the question was posed “why does Ukraine seem to have so many Nazis nowadays?” In that paper we were led to the further question “is the United States and possibly NATO involved in the funding, training and political support of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and if so, for what purpose?” It was concluded that in order to answer such questions fully, we would have to look at the historical root of Ukrainian nationalism and its relationship with U.S. Intelligence and NATO post-WWII. It is here that we will resume.

The Historical Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism

The birth of Ukrainian Nationalism as it is celebrated today has its origins in the 20th century. However, there are a few important historical highlights that should be known beforehand.

Kievan Rus’ was a federation in Eastern-Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century and was made up of a variety of peoples including East Slavic, Baltic and Finnic, and was ruled by the Rurik dynasty.

Today’s Belarus, Russia and Ukraine all recognize the people of Kievan Rus’ as their cultural ancestors.

Kievan Rus’ would fall during the Mongol invasion of the 1240s, however, different branches of the Rurik dynasty would continue to rule parts of Rus’ under the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia (modern-day Ukraine and Belarus), the Novgorod Republic (overlapping with modern-day Finland and Russia) and Vladimir-Suzdal (regarded as the cradle of the Great Russian language and nationality which evolved into the Grand Duchy of Moscow).

The Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia was under the vassalage of the Golden Horde during the 14th century, which was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate originating as the northwestern section of the Mongol Empire.

After the poisoning of Yuri II Boleslav, King of Galicia-Volhynia in 1340, civil war ensued along with a power struggle for control over the region between Lithuania, Poland and its ally Hungary. Several wars would be fought from 1340-1392 known as the Galicia-Volhynia wars.

In 1349, the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia was conquered and incorporated into Poland.

In 1569 the Union of Lublin took place, joining the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania forming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which ruled as a large and major power for over 200 years.

From 1648-1657 the Khmelnytsky Uprising, also known as the Cossack-Polish War took place in the eastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which led to the creation of a Cossack Hetmanate in Ukraine.

Under the command of Khmelnytsky, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, allied with the Crimean Tatars and local Ukrainian peasantry, fought against Polish domination and against the Commonwealth forces; which was followed by the massacre of Polish-Lithuanian townsfolk, the Roman Catholic clergy and the Jews.

Khmelnytsky to this day is a major heroic figure in the Ukrainian nationalist history.

By 1772, the once powerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had too far declined to further govern itself and went through three partitions, conducted by the Habsburg Monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire.

From the first partition of Poland in 1772, the name “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria” was granted to the Habsburg Monarchy (Austrian Empire, which later became the Austria-Hungarian Empire in 1867). Most of Volhynia would go to the Russian Empire in 1795.

By 1914, Europe would be dragged into WWI. In March 1918, after two months of negotiations with the Central Powers (the German, Austria-Hungary, Bulgarian, and Ottoman Empire), the new Bolshevik government of Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ceding claims on Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as the condition for peace (Note: the Bolshevik Revolution began in March 1917). WWI would officially end on November 11th, 1918.

As a result of the treaty, eleven nations became “independent” in eastern Europe and western Asia, Ukraine was among these nations. In reality, what this meant was that they were to become vassal states to Germany with political and economic dependencies. However, when Germany lost the war, the treaty was annulled.

With Germany out of the picture and the dissolution of both the Austria-Hungary and Russian Empire; Poland and Ukraine found themselves in a position to establish their independence.

During the Habsburg’s rule, due to their leniency toward national minorities, both Polish and Ukrainian nationalist movements developed, and both were interested in claiming the territory of Galicia for their own. Western Galicia at that point, with the ancient capital of Kraków had a majority Polish population, whereas eastern Galicia made up the heartland of the ancient Galicia-Volhynia and had a majority Ukrainian population.

The Polish-Ukrainian war was fought from November 1918 to July 1919 between the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian forces (consisting of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic and Ukrainian People’s Republic). Poland won and re-occupied Galicia.

The Polish-Soviet war would be fought between February 1919 and March 1921. This coincided with a series of conflicts known as the Ukrainian War of Independence (1917-1921) which fought to form a Ukrainian republic.

By 1922, Ukraine was divided between the Bolshevik Ukrainian SSR, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. The Second Polish Republic reclaimed Lviv, along with Galicia and most of Volhynia, the rest of Volhynia became part of the Ukrainian SSR.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was founded in 1929 in East Galicia (located in Poland at the time) and called for an independent and ethnically homogenous Ukraine.

From the beginning, the OUN had tensions between the young radical Galician students and the older military veteran leadership (who grew up in the more lenient Austria-Hungary Empire). The younger generation had only known oppression under the new Polish rule and underground warfare. As a result, the younger faction tended to be more impulsive, violent and ruthless.

During this period, Polish persecution of Ukrainians increased and many Ukrainians, especially the youth (who felt they had no future) lost faith in traditional legal approaches, in their elders and in western democracies who were seen as turning their backs on Ukraine.

The OUN assassinated Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in 1934. Among those tried and convicted in 1936 for Pieracki’s murder, were OUN’s Stefan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. Both escaped when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939.

Support for the OUN increased as Polish persecution of Ukrainians continued. By the beginning of WWII, the OUN was estimated to have 20,000 active members and many times that number in sympathizers in Galicia.

In 1940 the OUN would split into the OUN-M led by Andriy Melnyk, and OUN-B headed by Stefan Bandera which made up most of the membership in Galicia and consisted mainly of youth.

In August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the non-aggression pact known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, dividing Poland. Eastern Galicia and Volhynia were reunified with Ukraine, under the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

In June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded western Ukraine, there were many western Ukrainians who welcomed the invading Nazis as their “liberators.” It should be noted here that this was not a sentiment predominantly shared by the rest of Ukraine, who fought in or alongside the Russian Red Army against the invading Nazis.

Both the OUN-M and OUN-B would spend much of the war collaborating closely with the Germans. They had no issues with the Nazi ideology for they too believed that a solution was found in returning to a “pure race.” In the case of Ukraine, this pure race consisted of a somewhat romanticised concept of “ethnic Ukrainian,” based on the golden age of Kievan Rus’.

The OUN believed that the “pure ethnic Ukrainian race” were the only true descendants of the royal bloodline of the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus’. And rather than looking at Belarusians and the Russians as their brothers and sisters who shared the same ancestry, the OUN viewed them more so as “ethnic impostors” so to speak of this pure bloodline.

This can be seen today with Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups attacking Ukrainian ethnic Russians for the past 8 years in Ukraine. An issue that is almost entirely ignored in the West. See part 1 of this series.

It was believed that if the purity of the bloodline were returned, greatness would once again be bestowed on Ukraine (which had never really existed as a fully independent region).

It was for this reason that the OUN and the SS Galician division believed that exterminating tens of thousands of Poles, Jews and any other non-ethnic Ukrainian was justified. The SS Galician division (which had an overlapping membership with the OUN) were notorious for their extreme cruelty, including acts of torture and mutilation on par with Japan’s Unit 731.

To give an idea of the level of support in western Ukraine at the time for a “pure Ukrainian race,” the SS Galician division recruited 80,000 Galician volunteers in one and a half months.

The trident symbol, known also as tryzub, is an important symbol for Ukrainians, since it comes from the days of Kievan Rus’ and its earliest use was during the rule of Vladimir/Volodmyr the Great, about 1,000 years ago.

However, it is also most unfortunately why the OUN chose the tryzub for both their emblems and flag, to signify their desire to return to those glory days, which was thought could only be achieved through ethnic cleansing.

The above OUN-B flag (also used by their paramilitary unit UPA) is known as the “Blood and Soil” flag. The “Blood and Soil” nationalist slogan originated in Nazi Germany to express its ideal of a racially defined national body (blood) united with a settlement area (soil).

It is also why Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups that formed from 1991 onward (after Ukraine’s independence from the USSR), more often than not, also use the tryzub.

Image above shows flags of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine today. In the Azov flag shown above, there is a combination of the Wolfsangel and Black Sun, two symbols associated with the Wehrmacht and SS.

In 1998, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), at the behest of Congress, launched what became the largest congressionally mandated, single-subject declassification effort in history. As a result, more than 8.5 million pages of records have been opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246) and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act (P.L. 106-567). These records include operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA, the FBI and Army intelligence. IWG issued three reports to Congress between 1999 and 2007.

A research group was put together to compile and organise key elements of this massive newly declassified database, the result was the publication of “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” in 2005, and “Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War” in 2011, both published by the National Archives, and which will be used as a key reference for the rest of this paper.

Richard Breitman writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (1):

“What must be the earliest history (or mini-history) of the extermination of the Jews in Lvov [Lviv] was prepared on June 5, 1945. The ten-page document pointed out that, as soon as German troops took Lvov, Ukrainians in the city denounced Jews who had cooperated with Soviet authorities during the period of Soviet occupation, 1939-1941. Those Jews were arrested, gathered near the municipal building, and beaten by the Germans and local inhabitants. Later, local inhabitants, especially from the villages nearby, ravaged the Jewish quarter and beat Jews who stood in the way of their robbery. Starting on July 1, a pogrom was organized; German police, soldiers, and local Ukrainians all took part. Many of those arrested were tortured and killed… More than twelve thousand Jews were killed in the first weeks of the German occupation of Lvov.” [emphasis added]

Norman J.W. Goda writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (2):

“In its work to destabilize the Polish state, the OUN’s ties with Germany extended back to 1921. These ties intensified under the Nazi regime as war with Poland drew near. Galicia was allotted to the Soviets under the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and the Germans welcomed anti-Polish Ukrainian activists into the German-occupied General Government. In 1940 and 1941, in preparation for what would become the eastern campaign, the Germans began to recruit Ukrainians, particularly from Bandera’s wing, as saboteurs, interpreters, and police, and trained them at a camp at Zakopane near Cracow [Kraków]. In the spring of 1941, the Wehrmacht also developed two Ukrainian battalions with the approval of the Banderists, one code named ‘Nightingale’ (Nachtigall) and the other code named ‘Roland’.”

What showcases the youth, and unfortunately ignorance, of the OUN-B, is that the “blood and soil” slogan originating with the Nazis, to which they chose for their own OUN-B flag, was also tied to the belief that the German people were to expand into Eastern Europe, conquering and enslaving the native Slavic and Baltic population via Generalplan Ost. Thus, these Ukrainian nationalists were never considered worthy of sharing in this vision of Nazi Germany but had been regarded as the ultimate slaves for the new German empire from the very beginning.

The OUN-B would learn this lesson the hard way. Eight days after Germany’s invasion of the USSR, on June 30th, 1941, OUN-B proclaimed the establishment of the Ukrainian State in the name of Bandera in Lviv and pledged loyalty to Hitler. In response, the OUN-B leaders and associates were arrested and imprisoned or killed outright by the Gestapo (approx. 1500 persons). The Germans had no intention of even allowing a semi-independent Ukraine to form. Stefan Bandera and his closest deputy Jaroslav Stetsko were initially kept under house arrest and then sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp (a comparatively comfortable confinement to the other concentration camps).

Mykola Lebed was able to slip through the German police net and became the de facto leader of the OUN-B leadership, also known as the Banderists.

On July 16th, 1941, the Germans absorbed Galicia into the General Government. In October 1941, the German Security Police issued a wanted poster with Lebed’s photograph.

The Germans transferred administrative and senior auxiliary police positions in western Ukraine to Melnyk’s group, OUN-M. (3) German security police formations were ordered to arrest and kill Bandera loyalists in western Ukraine for fear that they would rise against German rule, though this order was eventually revoked.

The following year Lebed would become the leader of the underground terror wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which continued in function until 1956.

Image to the left: Stefan Bandera. Image to the right: Mykola Lebed

Eastern Ukrainians later claimed that Mykola Lebed as leader of the OUN-B, took over the UPA by assassinating the original Ukrainian leaders. (4)

The OUN counted among its enemies those that had denied Ukrainian independence (including Poles and Soviets), those in the Ukraine who had failed to assimilate (Jews) and at times when it suited them the Germans. They also regarded the Jews as the primary support and “spreaders” of Bolshevism.

Breitman and Goda write (5):

“When the war turned against the Germans in early 1943, leaders of Bandera’s group believed that the Soviets and Germans would exhaust each other, leaving an independent Ukraine as in 1918. Lebed proposed in April to ‘cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,’ so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918. Ukrainians serving as auxiliary policemen for the Germans now joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)… On a single day, July 11th, 1943, the UPA attacked some 80 localities killing… 10,000 Poles…The Banderists and UPA also resumed cooperation with the Germans.” [emphasis added]

This was all done under the command of Mykola Lebed.

By 1943, aware that their situation was becoming increasingly insecure, the OUN tried to re-centralise their forces. However, infighting occurred between the OUN-B against the OUN-M and the UPA unit of Taras Bulba-Borovets (of the exiled Ukrainian People’s Republic) who in a letter accused the OUN-B of among other things: banditry, of wanting to establish a one-party state, and of fighting not for the people but in order to rule the people.

In their struggle for dominance in Volhynia, the Banderists (OUN-B) would kill tens of thousands of Ukrainians for any link to the networks of Bulba-Borovets or Melnyk (OUN-M). (6)

By September 1944 German Army officers in northern Ukraine told their superiors in Foreign Armies East that the UPA was a “natural ally of Germany” and “a valuable aid for the German High Command,” and Himmler himself authorized intensified contacts with UPA. (7)

Norman J.W. Goda writes (8):

“Though UPA propaganda emphasized that organization’s independence from the Germans, the UPA also ordered some young Ukrainians to volunteer for the Ukrainian SS Division “Galicia,” and the rest to fight by guerilla methods. Lebed still hoped for recognition from the Germans.” [emphasis added]

The SS Galicia Division existed from April 1943 to April 15th, 1945. Germany surrendered on May 7th, 1945.

In September 1944, the Germans released Bandera and Stetsko from Sachsenhausen.

The Ukrainian Nationalist Movement Post-WWII: Bought and Paid for by the CIA and served à la Lebed

“[Lebed] is a well known sadist and collaborator of the Germans” (9)

– 1947 Report by The U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC)

In July 1944 Mykola Lebed helped form the Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council (UHVR), which would claim to represent the Ukrainian nation and served as an underground government in the Carpathian mountains, in opposition to the Ukrainian SSR. The dominant political party in UHVR was the Bandera group and the UPA, which from that point on served as the army of UHVR and continued to fight the Soviets until 1956.

A feud erupted in 1947 between Bandera and Stetsko on one side for an independent Ukraine under a single party led by Bandera himself vs. Lebed and Father Ivan Hrynioch (chief of the UHVR Political Section) who were against Bandera being head of state.

At an August 1948 Congress of the OUN Foreign Section, Bandera (who still controlled 80% of the UHVR) expelled the Hrynioch-Lebed group. He claimed exclusive authority on the Ukrainian national movement and continued terror tactics against anti-Banderist Ukrainian leaders in Western Europe and maneuvered for control of Ukrainian émigré organizations. (10) However, Lebed who had become close with the Americans at that point was recognized, along with Hrynioch as the official UHVR representation abroad.

With the war lost, Lebed adopted a strategy similar to that of Reinhard Gehlen – he contacted the Allies after escaping Rome in 1945 with a trove of names and contacts of anti-Soviets located in western Ukraine and in displaced persons camps in Germany. This made him attractive to the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) despite their above admission in their 1947 report.

In late 1947, Lebed who it was feared would be assassinated by the Soviets in Rome, was smuggled along with his family by the CIC to Munich, Germany in December 1947 for his safety.

Norman J.W. Goda writes (11):

“By late 1947, Lebed had thoroughly sanitized his prewar and wartime activities for American consumption. In his own rendition, he had been a victim of the Poles, the Soviets, and the Germans – he would carry the Gestapo “wanted” poster for the rest of his life to prove his anti-Nazi credentials…He also published a 126-page booklet on the UPA, which chronicled the heroic struggle of Ukrainians against both Nazis and Bolsheviks, while calling for an independent, greater Ukraine that would represent the human ideals of free speech and free faith. The UPA, according to the booklet, never collaborated with the Nazis, nor is there any mention of the slaughter of Galician Jews or Poles in the book. The CIC considered the booklet to be the ‘complete background on the subject.’ The CIC overlooked the fact that under its own watch an OUN Congress held in September 1947 had split, thanks to Lebed’s criticism of the creeping democratization of the OUN. This was overlooked by the CIA which began using Lebed extensively in 1948…In June 1949…the CIA smuggled him [Lebed] into the United States with his wife and daughter under the legal cover of the Displaced Persons Act.” [emphasis added]

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began investigating Lebed and in March 1950 reported to Washington that numerous Ukrainian informants spoke of Lebed’s leading role among the “Bandera terrorists” and that during the war the Bandersists were trained and armed by the Gestapo and responsible for “wholesale murders of Ukrainians, Poles and Jewish [sic]…In all these actions, Lebed was one of the most important leaders.” (12)

In 1951, top INS officials informed the CIA of its findings along with the comment that Lebed would likely face deportation. The CIA responded on October 3, 1951, that all of the charges were false and that the Gestapo “wanted” poster of Lebed proved that he “fought with equal zeal against the Nazis and Bolsheviks.” (13)

INS officials as a result suspended the investigation on Lebed.

In February 1952, the CIA pressed the INS to grant Lebed re-entry papers so that he could leave and re-enter the United States at will. Argyle Mackey, Commissioner of the INS, refused to grant this.

On May 5, 1952, Allen Dulles, then Assistant Director of the CIA wrote a letter to Mackey stating (14):

“In connection with future Agency operations of the first importance, it is urgently necessary that subject [Lebed] be able to travel in Western Europe. Before [he] undertakes such travel, however, this Agency must…assure his re-entry into the United States without investigation or incident which would attract undue attentions to his activities.”

Above image is the original document of the Dulles letter to Mackey on behalf of Mykola Lebed.

What was in West Germany? General Reinhard Gehlen, former chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence, who had been conveniently allowed to re-enter West Germany to establish his Gehlen Organisation which would later form the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service of West Germany) in 1956 .

Dulles also wanted Lebed’s legal status changed to that of “permanent resident,” under Section 8 of the CIA Act of 1949. The INS never investigated further after Dulles’ letter and Lebed became a naturalized U.S. citizen in March 1957.

Bandera would also be stationed in West Germany with his family after the war, where he remained the leader of the OUN-B and worked with several anti-communist organizations as well as with British Intelligence. (15) At this point Bandera had become too much of a liability and there were multiple attempts, by both the Americans and British starting in 1953, to get Bandera to step down and for Lebed to represent “the entire Ukrainian liberation movement in the homeland.” Bandera refused and went rogue.

It is said that Bandera was assassinated in 1959 by a KGB agent in Munich, however, one cannot help but note that it was excellent timing and extremely beneficial for the Americans that Bandera was taken out when he was, considering what they had planned for Ukraine’s future…

Among the declassified records are that of Hoover’s FBI, who had a small trove of captured German General Staff documents from 1943 and 1944, which revealed German appreciation of the UPA’s work while mentioning Lebed by name. (16) It appears this was never shared with any agency or institution, other than the CIA, despite requests from the INS during their investigation of Lebed.

Interestingly, Goda writes (17):

“The full extent of his [Lebed’s] activities as ‘Foreign Minister’ [of the UHVR] may never become known, but FBI surveillance of him gives some idea. Partly, Lebed lectured at prestigious universities such as Yale on such topics as biological warfare used by the Soviet government in the Ukraine.” [emphasis added]

The following is an indication as to what Dulles may have been referring to as the urgent need for Lebed’s re-entry into Western Europe.

Breitman and Goda write (18):

“By 1947 some 250,000 Ukrainians were living…in Germany, Austria, and Italy, many of them OUN activists or sympathizers. After 1947 UPA fighters began crossing into the U.S. zone, having reached the border on foot through Czechoslovakia.”

However, Lebed was not only urgently needed in Europe, but also within the United States. Once in the United States, Lebed was selected as the CIA’s chief contact/advisor for AERODYNAMIC.

Breitman and Goda write (19):

“AERODYNAMIC’s first phase involved infiltration into Ukraine and then exfiltration of CIA-trained Ukrainian agents. By January 1950 the CIA’s arm for the collection of secret intelligence (Office of Special Operations, OSO) and its arm for covert operations (Office of Policy Coordination, OPC) participated [author’s note: the Allen Dulles rogue faction of the CIA]…Washington was especially pleased with the high level of UPA training in the Ukraine and its potential for further guerilla actions, and with ‘the extraordinary news that…active resistance to the Soviet regime was spreading steadily eastward, out of the former Polish, Greek Catholic provinces… [However] By 1954 Lebed’s group lost all contact with UHVR. By that time the Soviets subdued both the UHVR and UPA, and the CIA ended the aggressive phase of AERODYNAMIC.

Beginning in 1953 AERODYNAMIC began to operate through a Ukrainian study group under Lebed’s leadership in New York under CIA auspices, which collected Ukrainian literature and history and produced Ukrainian nationalist newspapers, bulletins, radio programming, and books for distribution in the Ukraine. In 1956 this group was formally incorporated as the non-profit Prolog Research and Publishing Association. It allowed the CIA to funnel funds as ostensible private donations without taxable footprints. To avoid nosey New York State authorities, the CIA turned Prolog into a for-profit enterprise called Prolog Research Corporation, which ostensibly received private contracts. Under Hrinioch [Hrynioch], Prolog maintained a Munich office named the Ukrainische Geseelschaft fur Auslandsstudein, EV. Most publications were created here.

Prolog recruited and paid Ukrainian émigré writers who were generally unaware that they worked in a CIA-controlled operation. Only the six top members of the ZP/UHVR were witting agents. Beginning in 1955, leaflets were dropped over Ukraine by air[,] and radio broadcasts titled Nova Ukraina were aired in Athens for Ukrainian consumption. These activities gave way to systematic mailing campaigns to Ukraine through Ukrainian contacts in Poland and émigré contacts in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Spain, Sweden, and elsewhere. The newspaper Suchasna Ukrainia (Ukraine Today), information bulletins, a Ukrainian language journal for intellectuals called Suchasnist (The Present), and other publications were sent to libraries, cultural institutions, administrative offices and private individuals in Ukraine. These activities encouraged Ukrainian nationalism…” [emphasis added]

The CIA bought and paid for a brand of Ukrainian Nationalism à la Lebed. One of the most horrifying butchers of OUN/UPA was given reign to shape the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people around their nationalist identity, an identity as defined by the OUN. It is also shaped historical and cultural interpretation such as to further romanticise the concept of the great Ukrainian race of Volodomyr the Great, encouraging a further sense of superiority and further divide between themselves and Belarussians and Russians.

One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and…there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.” (20)

Breitman and Goda continue:

“…Prolog [also] influenced [the next] Ukrainian generation…Prolog had become in the words of one senior CIA official, the sole ‘vehicle for CIA’s operations directed at the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and [its] forty million Ukrainian citizens.’

Lebed overtly distanced himself and the Ukrainian nationalist movement from the overt anti-Semitism of his Banderist days…More to protect the name of Ukrainian nationalism, he publicly condemned the ‘provocative libel’ and ‘slanderous statements’ against Jews, adding in a particularly forgetful note that, ‘the Ukrainian people…are opposed to all and any preaching of hatred for other people.’…Former Banderists…now attacked the Soviets for anti-Semitism rather than with it.

Lebed retired in 1975 but remained an adviser and consultant to Prolog and the ZP/UHVR…In the 1980s AERODYNAMIC’s name was changed to QRDYNAMIC and in the 1980s PDDYNAMIC and then QRPLUMB. In 1977 President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski helped to expand the program owing to what he called its ‘impressive dividends’ and the ‘impact on specific audiences in the target area.’ In the 1980s Prolog expanded its operation to reach other Soviet nationalities, and in a supreme irony, these included dissident Soviet Jews. With the USSR teetering on the brink of collapse in 1990, QRPLUMB was terminated with a final payout of $1.75 million. Prolog would continue its activities, but it was on its own financially.

In June 1985 the General Accounting Office mentioned Lebed’s name in a public report on Nazis and collaborators who settled in the United States with help from U.S. intelligence agencies. The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the Department of Justice began investigating Lebed that year. The CIA worried that public scrutiny of Lebed would compromise QRPLUMB and that failure to protect Lebed would trigger outrage in the Ukrainian émigré community. It thus shielded Lebed by denying any connection between Lebed and the Nazis and by arguing that he was a Ukrainian freedom fighter. The truth, of course, was more complicated. As late as 1991 the CIA tried to dissuade OSI from approaching the German, Polish, and Soviet governments for war-related records related to the OUN. OSI eventually gave up the case, unable to procure definitive documents on Lebed.” [emphasis added]

Mykola Lebed died in 1998 under the protection of the CIA in New Jersey at the age of 89. His papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.

And there you have it, the true story of the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement in its form today, bought and paid for by the CIA. Thus, it is no coincidence that the OUN ideology is inextricable from the western Ukrainian nationalist identity today, nor that several neo-Nazi groups have formed since 1991 (since Ukraine’s independence from the USSR) who all view the OUN and Stepan Bandera as the Father of their movement.

[Shortly to follow, Part 3 will discuss NATO and the Gehlen Organization and how this ties into the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement and neo-Nazism in Ukraine today.]

The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com 

(1) Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 65
(2) Ibid. pg. 249
(3) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 74
(4) Ibid. pg. 74
(5) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 75-76
(6) Timothy Snyder. (2004) The Reconstruction of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press: pg. 164
(7) Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 250
(8) Ibid pg. 250
(9) Ibid pg. 251
(10) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 78
(11) Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 251
(12) Ibid. pg. 252
(13) Ibid. pg. 252
(14) Ibid. pg. 253
(15) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 81
(16) Richard Breitman, Norman J.W. Goda et al. (2005) U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis. National Archives & Cambridge University Press: pg. 254
(17) Ibid. pg 254
(18) Richard Breitman and Norman J.W. Goda. (2011) Hitler’s Shadow Nazi War Criminals, U. S. Intelligence, and the Cold War. National Archives: pg. 76
(19) Ibid. pg 87
(20) Ibid. pg. 89

TJ COLES

“[I]f you can learn all modalities of war, then you can be the god of war,” so said a Ukrainian artillery commander in 2016 while receiving training from the US Army.

The unnamed commander was quoted by Lt. Claire Vanderberg, a mortar platoon leader training soldiers as part of the Pentagon’s Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine. The training has taken place at the absurdly named International Peacekeeping and Security Center, which sits close to the border with Poland near the Ukrainian town of Yavoriv. Western media reported Russia’s recent cruise missile attack on the base, but chose not to mention what has taken place inside.

The relationship described above is a snapshot of a decades-long US-NATO effort to not only pull Ukraine from Russia’s orbit, but to actively weaponize the country against Moscow.

US national security state acknowledges “Russia is pushing back,” not pushing first

In their internal documents, the Pentagon and other arms of the US national security state reiterate the same arguments the anti-war left does when it explains how Ukraine has been used to provoke Russia into a military escalation. The principal difference is that the Pentagon speaks from an unabashedly imperialist perspective in which such provocations are seen as an important component of US power projection.

Recently, the US Director of National Intelligence’s Annual Threat Assessment reported: “Russia is pushing back against Washington where it can—locally and globally—employing techniques up to and including the use of force.” Note: Russia is “pushing back,” not pushing first.

A report from 2021 by the National Intelligence Council concedes of Russia and China: “Neither has felt secure in an international order designed for and dominated by democratic powers,” with “democratic” meaning the US and friends. Both Russia and China “have promoted a sovereignty-based international order that protects their absolute authority within their borders and geographic areas of influence.”

In October 2017, US Army Field Artillery School Assistant Commandant, Col. Heyward Hutson, who is responsible for training Ukrainians, explained: “Ukraine wants to become a NATO nation, but Russia doesn’t want them to be a NATO nation. Russia wants to have a buffer zone.” He added that another “problem is a lot of Eastern Ukraine is pro-Russia so the civilian population there is divided.” A 2016 US Army War College report reiterated: “Russia’s basic national security strategy is to keep its ‘neighboring belt stable’, NATO weak, China close, and the United States focused elsewhere.”

Another, from 2007, explains that the “pro-reform forces in power since the Orange Revolution” (read: pro-US forces) “would like to move Ukraine squarely into the Euro-Atlantic community with only limited deference to Russia.”

The document goes on to note that, at the time, the “Ukrainian political and military leadership has remained divided over the question of whether Ukraine should pursue a collective security approach or retain its neutral status.” It concluded that, while “[m]ost senior [Ukrainian] commanders have pro-reform credentials… there are still large numbers of senior leaders within the Main Defense Forces who have no or only limited exposure to Western training and operations.”

The US-sponsored coup of 2013-14 enabled Washington to smooth over that contradiction by launching an extensive program to train units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

President Bill Clinton signs NATO enlargement legislation, May 21, 1995

NATO is “not an exercise in diplomacy and deterrence as before”

When the Soviet Union collapsed, so too did its military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. But the West not only refused to disband its alliance—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—it expanded up to Russia’s borders.

NATO’s own records state that in 1992, “Just four months after Ukraine’s declaration of independence” from the USSR, “NATO invited its representative to an extraordinary meeting of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the body set up to shape cooperation between NATO and the states of the former Warsaw Pact.”   

Russia did not propose a similar pact with America’s neighbors.

In 1994, Ukraine joined the so-called Partnership for Peace (PFP). Citing the UN Charter, the PFP states that signatories agree “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, to respect existing borders and to settle disputes by peaceful means.” A US State Department primer reveals that the PFP had an ulterior motive. Its real aim was not neutrality but to move Ukraine and other signatories closer to NATO. “Participation in PFP does not guarantee entry into NATO, but it is the best preparation for states interested in becoming NATO members.”

The primer also lists the 52 actual and planned military exercises in which PFP members initially engaged on or near Russia’s borders.

Bill Clinton-era policymakers explained that “NATO is not merely an exercise in preventive diplomacy and deterrence as before.” NATO expansion had a political agenda. They considered “NATO enlargement [a]s a democratization policy.” As above, “democratization” means pro-US. Citing President Clinton’s 1996 campaign speeches, the report notes that in their minds NATO “will provide the stability needed for greater economic development in Central and Eastern Europe.” In other words, post-USSR NATO was designed, in part, to guarantee US led-“free markets” (which are often neither free nor markets, but monopolies,) in ex-Soviet nations where state-ownership of businesses was the norm.

In 1997, NATO and Ukraine signed the Charter on a Distinctive Partnership. The Charter was a prima facie violation of the PFP in that it compromised Ukraine’s political independence. It proposed several areas of NATO-Ukraine cooperation, “including civil emergency planning, military training and environmental security.” NATO brags: “cooperation between NATO and Ukraine quickly developed” in the form of “retraining for former military officers … and invit[ing] Ukraine to participate in NATO-led exercises.”

Making Ukraine a “military partner of the US”

The US Army says: “Ukraine has been a military partner of the U.S. dating back to the mid 1990s.” In 1998, America’s Special Operations Command Europe hosted a Special Operations Forces (SOF) conference in Stuttgart, Germany. The US Army reports: “This benchmark even brought military personnel from Moldova, Georgia, and the Ukraine together to view U.S. SOF demonstrations and discuss opportunities for future Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) and Joint Contact Team Program (JCTP) events.”

In June 2000, the US Marines reported that the Navy’s amphibious warship, the USS Trenton, had sailed from the Aegean to the Black Sea and had docked in Odessa (Ukraine). The 24^th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) “got to experience some of Odessa’s history first hand when they climbed the Prymorsky, or ‘Maritime’, Stairs.” In addition to the pleasantries, “the focus for MEU personnel and USS Trenton crew [was] NATO’s next exercise – Cooperative Partner 2000 (CP00) – of which Ukraine is the host nation.”

In addition to Ukraine’s participation in the US-led NATO training and exercises, Ukrainian soldiers fought in American-led wars. After 9/11, they participated in the occupation of Afghanistan via NATO’s so-called International Security Assistance Force. Ukrainian troops also aided the US-British-occupation of Iraq. In 2008, the Army lauded their comrades: “More than 5,000 Ukrainian troops have served in Iraq during Ukraine’s five years of service in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

After backing 2014 coup, US provides “lethal security assistance”

Established in 2014 during the US-backed coup, the Ukraine component of the US State Department and Pentagon’s Global Security Contingency Fund (GSCF) provides tens of millions of dollars-worth of training and equipment to “develop the tactical, operational, and institutional training capacities of its Ministry of Defense and National Guard.” The State Department says: “The GSCF has also supported Ukrainian Special Operations Forces in developing tactical and institutional capabilities that are compatible with Western models.”

According to one Pentagon-linked journal: “Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs from 2014 to 2021[, …] enabled the expansion and later integration of paramilitary forces into the National Guard,” including the nazi Azov Battalion.

From 2015, the Pentagon’s European Command oversaw the Joint Multinational Task Force-Ukraine (JMTF-U), in which the US Army and National Guard trains the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In addition, officers were trained in the US through the International Military Education and Training program. The Congressional Research Service reports that, “[s]eparately, U.S. Special Operations Forces have trained and advised Ukrainian special forces.” In addition, the US participates in the annual NATO Partnership for Peace exercise, Rapid Trident.

In November 2015, supposedly at the request of the new pro-US regime, the Obama administration sent two AN/TPQ radar systems to Ukraine. “President Petro Poroshenko had the opportunity to review the equipment, and was briefed by U.S. military personnel on its capabilities.”

The US Army later revealed that the radar system was not purely defensive. A team from US Army Europe, Fort Sill’s Fires Center of Excellence (FCoE), and the Army Security Assistance Training Management Organization (SATMO) “conducted four weeks of operator training.”

Since the initial delivery, “Ukraine received four additional Q-36 radars … and training by U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command with support from the FCoE and USSATMO.” The publication quoted one trainer as saying that “the U.S. team showed their brigade, battalion and platoon commanders how to tactically employ the radar system to support fire and maneuver efforts.”

Since 2016, SATMO’s Doctrine Education Advisory Group (DEAG) “has advised Ukrainian Security Forces at the operational level to revise doctrine, improve professional military education, enhance NATO interoperability and increase combat readiness.” In January this year, DEAG brought the first load of $200m-worth of “lethal security assistance, including ammunition for the frontline defenders of Ukraine.”

US and Canadian military officers meet uniformed members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion during a November 2017 multinational training session in Ukraine.

Photos from a deleted page on Azov’s website: https://t.co/08C1FLQ6Ee pic.twitter.com/5RAIif6OFf

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 20, 2022

US trains Ukrainians to “blend into the local populace” waging warfare in civilian-heavy areas

One of the more immoral US actions in Ukraine has been the training of armed forces to fight in civilian areas, goading Russia to fight in densely-populated locations with the effect of scoring anti-Russia propaganda points when Russians kill Ukrainian civilians.

In 2015, the US Marines implied that American service personnel would travel to Ukraine to fight. “Unofficial travel (leave or liberty) to any country in Africa or the following European countries [including Ukraine and its neighbors] requires command O-6 level approval … The countries are subject to change based on the Foreign Clearance Guide (FCG), Department of State (DOS), Combatant Command, and/or Intelligence threat notifications.” This suggests preparation for “irregular” warfare.

An undated document published by the US Special Operations Center of Excellence (SOCE), apparently from around 2017, states that “the United States should learn from the Chechnya rebels’ reaction” to Russia’s invasion of Chechnya in the ‘90s. It explains that the “rebels” engaged in “decentralized operations,” using social media to “blend into the local populace.” Russia’s enemies used “misinformation” to manipulate Russians into killing the rebels’ enemies.

The SOCE paper goes on to note that the Army Special Operation Forces “are trained to thrive in these environments.” The document explicitly advocates for the US to train irregular forces to provoke Russia: “The United States should form an interagency working group with the Department of State, members of the intelligence community and SOCOM,” the Special Operations Command, which would “serv[e] as the DoD lead/representative.” It suggests that such a working group “understand that SOCOM actions will need to be unconventional and irregular in order to compete with Russian modern warfare tactics.”

By bolstering Ukraine’s armed forces and goading Russia, US elites have openly used Ukrainian civilians as pawns. For many years, Ukrainian forces were trained in urban combat by US personnel: i.e., to fight Russians in densely-populated civilian areas. “Task Force Illini” is comprised of 150 soldiers from the 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Illinois Army National Guard.

In September 2020, the US Army reported that Armed Forces Ukraine soldiers “honed their urban operations skills as Task Force Illini advisors lent their expertise at Combat Training Center in Yavoriv” – the Western Ukrainian de facto NATO base near Poland’s border.

You may have heard about the International Peacekeeping & Security Center in Ukraine since Russia struck it. Previously, US & Canada used it to host trainings of Ukrainian forces. Here’s a trainee with two black US servicemembers geotagging himself in Zimbabwe & posting “14/88” pic.twitter.com/dzsNsKzZEC

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) March 16, 2022

“Thunderbirds” train Ukrainian in full-scale vehicular combat

The Oklahoma-based “Thunderbirds” have gone through several incarnations over the last century. The army unit was originally known as the 45th Infantry Division and is now the 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. By early-2017, the JMTG-U mission fell under the 7th Army Training Command and US Army Europe, which paired Thunderbirds from the 1st Battalion, 179th Infantry Regiment with soldiers from the Ukrainian 28th Mechanized Brigade and 79th Airborne Brigade. Their goal was to prepare Ukrainians for full-on vehicular combat.

Putin claims that Ukraine is a pawn of NATO. US propaganda rejects the notion, attempting to prove it by publicly ruling out Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance. But in April 2017, the US Army admitted that under the JMTG-U, the Thunderbirds’ mission was “to train the Ukrainian army to NATO standards, develop their noncommissioned officer corps, and help them to establish a combat training center, so that in the future, they can continue to train themselves.” So, if the Ukrainian military is trained to NATO standards and is overseen by a US puppet president, it might as well be part of NATO, minus the US obligation to come to its defense.

The proposed center became the Yavoriv Combat Training Center. The US Army reported that in October 2017, “a new grenade range was opened. Maj. Montana Dugger said: “We’ve helped them build long-range maintenance plans so they’ll be able to use these facilities for the next 20, 30-plus years.”

Seemingly ignorant of the comical doublespeak, the US Army also explained that Ukrainian’s Combat Training Center “is being established at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center near Yavoriv.” Also ironic is that while the Thunderbirds train a military incorporating neo-Nazi units to fight Russians in Ukraine, its pre-1930s insignia was a swastika, which its Oklahoma-based museum describes as “an Ancient American Indian symbol of good luck.”

From the 45th Infantry Division Museum, the unit’s original pre-1930’s swastika patch

CIA covert operations’ goal: “kill Russians”

In addition to the overt but under- or non-reported events outlined above, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has run a covert, eight-year training program. Why the need for covert ops in the face of extensive overt projects? The CIA specializes in assassination, proxy warfare, psychological operations, and false flags. This suggests that their efforts include tactics prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

Yahoo! News reported that in 2014, under a doctrine called “covert action funding,” “a small, select group of veteran CIA paramilitaries made their first secret trips to the frontlines to meet with Ukrainian counterparts.” The training was conducted by the CIA’s Special Activities Center, which suggests that even if the officers were “ex-CIA” and Special Forces, they were given access to Langley at high-levels, making it a de facto official mission.

One operative is quoted as saying that the officers attempted to Talibanize the Ukrainian paramilitaries in the sense that the Afghan Taliban had no sophisticated hardware that was vulnerable to enemy blinding. Ergo, basic, non-tech warfare training was required. The report says that the trainers:

“taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them vulnerable to attacks by artillery; how to use covert communications tools; and how to remain undetected in the war zone while also drawing out Russian and insurgent forces from their positions, among other skills, according to former officials.”

In addition, one former senior source said (paraphrased by the reporter): “The agency needed to determine the ‘backbone’ of the Ukrainians … The question was, ‘Are they going to get rolled, or are going to stand up and fight?”

So who tends to have “backbone,” i.e., a ruthless and psychopathic fighting spirit? Fascists and ultra-nationalists. Indeed, it has been widely reported by even US corporate media that the Ukrainian Armed Forces and paramilitary units were infested with Nazis. Today, the same media refer to the Nazis as mere nationalists.

Beginning 2015, the CIA’s Ground Department arranged for Ukrainians to be trained in the US south. The operations continue to the present and have been expanded under the Biden administration. “The multiweek, U.S.-based CIA program has included training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like ‘cover and move,’ intelligence and other areas.” One senior officer is quoted as saying: “The United States is training an insurgency … to kill Russians.”

In February this year, shortly before the Russian invasion, it was reported that the CIA had been “preparing Ukrainians to mount an insurgency against a Russian occupation.” Against an occupation? Or an insurgency to provoke an occupation?

In addition to the CIA, the US military has its own covert operations. Under the Resistance Operating Concept started in 2018, the Pentagon appears to have been training territorial defense units comprised of Ukrainian civilians. This seems to have led to the creation by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces creating a National Resistance Center that teaches civilians guerrilla tactics.

Ukraine military build-up brings the world to the brink

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, pro-Russian eastern protests erupted in Donetsk and Luhansk. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) noted: “The government in Kyiv responded with military force and employed local militias to help push back the separatists.” The CRS added that the US leads Britain, Canada, and Lithuania in the Multinational Joint Commission on Defense Reform and Security Cooperation. The Pentagon’s European Command had a European Reassurance Initiative at the time, which is now called the European Deterrence Initiative. Under this program, dozens of Ukrainians were trained in Huntsville, Alabama, in RQ-11B, hand-launched Raven drone operations. Seventy-two drones were sent to Ukraine in 2016.

A January 2016 UK House of Commons Library research briefing states: “Fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014 and injured more than 20,000.” The briefing goes on to note that after the UN Security Council-backed Minsk II agreement, which called for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of frontline forces on both sides, the Ukrainian parliament granted special status and enhanced autonomy to parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

The Royal United Services Institute is a UK Ministry of Defense-linked think-tank. One of its reports concedes that Russia had a largely “defensive policy” when it came to Ukraine. It says: “Russian officials have become alarmed by expanding and overlapping Western alliances from an enlarged NATO and EU, to AUKUS and the Coalition of Democracies promoted by both the US and the UK.”

Part of Russia’s strategy has its roots in the US-led destruction of Libya in 2011, the report explains. The NATO bombing of Libya and overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi “underscored how strong Western alliances were able to bypass or manipulate the [UN Security Council] UNSC, essentially circumventing a forum where Russian interests could be protected.”

Indeed, on February 27th, 2022, the UNSC adopted Resolution 2623, which states: “the lack of unanimity of its permanent members at the 8979th meeting has prevented it from exercising its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

The absence of international diplomacy, the weakness of a domestic anti-war movement in the US, and the cheerleading for war by many leftists and liberals under the doctrine that Putin is an evil villain has pushed the world as close to terminal nuclear disaster as it has been since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis; perhaps even closer. Many Russians have taken to the streets to clamor for a ceasefire. After looking the other way as their leaders spent the past 8 years weaponizing Ukraine against Russia, Western publics have yet to demand the same.

thegrayzone.com

The truth is that it’s the lowest hanging fruit and there is almost no impetus either on the ground or from media bosses to check facts. But what will these journalists do when the truth gets out after the war ends in Ukraine, when they become the focus of opprobrium?

The biggest secret which no journalist ever wants to tell even his own mother is that war reporting is absurdly easy and can actually be carried out by the most stupid numpty in the office who struggles to even operate the photocopier. Sure, the psychological trauma weighs heavily, often after the event and it takes a certain amount of courage and selfishness to put yourself in a conflict zone (selfish if you have a family back home) but in terms of the actual mechanisms of the job, war reporting really is not at all challenging. The day to day events in a conflict are so horrific that really all the reporter needs to do is get to where the action is and take the shots, roll the camera or get the quotes. The stories practically write themselves for the simple reason that many of the normal requisites of reporting don’t apply in conflict zones. The consumer has an unlimited appetite for the same story over and over again. Blood and gore really does stun viewers, particularly in broadcast news, into a sense of shock and morbid curiosity which then metamorphosises into an addiction, an adrenalin rush which the reporters on the front line themselves also fall victim to.

But if you have the courage or are driven by your own sense of self-importance and can put out of your mind your loved ones, the a-b-c of reporting couldn’t be simpler or more rudimentary. The stories literally present themselves packaged and ready to go, with no annoying questions by editors who want to slow down the process by painful fact checking and due diligence.

You never forget the first time a gun is pointed at you. For me it was in the summer of 1992 in Mogadishu, Somalia where the country was being torn apart by a civil war and its capital resembled a hell which not even Ridley Scott could capture in Black Hawk Down. It was a security guard in a compound who wanted me to leave. I resisted and argued with him in Swahili until I heard the definitive click of the hammer on a Colt 45 1911 being pulled back and the muzzle pointed at me. “D’toka sai yee” (get out now) was all he had to say as my heart thumped so hard I was convinced it was jump completely out of its rib cage.

Getting the builders in

You also never forget the first time you hear the distinctive faint whistle noise of a 7.62mm round as it passes your ears. And you defiantly never forget the awkwardness of not knowing what to do when people are actually firing at you which also happened to me in Mogadishu a couple of days later where I was naively confused by parts of the wall next to me exploding. I stupidly thought that the summer heat was making the cement crack or that perhaps workman were drilling it from the other side. What an idiot. Well, I was in my mid 20s.

Somalia was my first conflict. Others followed in East Africa including Rwanda and Southern Sudan in ’94 and then later the former Yugoslavia in ’97 and ’98, Lebanon ’06, Afghanistan ’08. In all those times, I lost count of the whistling bullet noises of the number of times militias pointed guns in my face and how the sight of dead bodies shocks and yet intrigues at the same time. In 1994 in Southern Sudan I was specifically sent to a region which was being bombed by the Khartoum regime from Anthonovs which were barely visible at 18,000 feet. I was sent there to be bombed on and film it which I dutifully did for what is now APTN news in London. The idea today that AP, which is barely a shadow of itself compared to those days, would send a freelance journalist on such a suicide mission is unthinkable.

In all that time though I was aware how the strength of the story more or less dictates your role to document, film, replicate the events for history. What I was to imagine would be the diligence of journalism wasn’t required. There wasn’t really any fact checking as, on a practical level, it was more or less impossible. When you arrived at a site of a massacre, you’re more or less hostage to the anguish and horror and the people who are there to fill in the gaps and put the story together. It’s absurdly easy, a child could do it. One of the things I learnt in all of those places was that the victims, even though they didn’t need to lie, did just that. Even when a massacre happened and it was pretty obvious who did it, there were still plenty of people who survived who sexed up the story when it was so sexed up already that it hardly needed it. The temptation is too much for those who are the victims, but also for the governments, regular armies and aid organisations when a journalist is there on the scene and he has shown that speed is of the essence to get the story processed and sent back. I wonder whether the Marioupol theatre bombing is one of these stories as the facts as they are presented leave more questions than answers and residents claiming that they had been told days beforehand by right wing groups sympathetic to Zelensky that they were going to bomb it themselves as an amoral ruse to draw NATO into the war. We saw exactly this ploy by Muslim groups in Sarajevo in the Yugoslav war who figured that they could bomb their own civilians and western media would point the fingers at the demonized Serbs in the hills – which became the basis of NATO airstrikes against Milosevic.

In the nineties, we relied very heavily on our editors in London to provide a layer of fact checking as we weren’t hooked up to the internet (certainly not in my Africa and Yugoslavia period).

A generation who knew right from wrong

You chose a side. Usually the one which is first of all the more practical to get to; and secondly the one which is going to give you the instantly vivid and horrific pictures. And mostly journalists, certainly not today, ever cross the line between where they are to the group which was the aggressor. I tried to do this in ’92 in Somalia in its capital which was divided by a north-south line and very nearly got shot by Aideed’s thugs who chased after me in the south. I literally ran for my life carrying bulky video equipment which would be in a museum today, it was so heavy. My friend Dan Eldon was not so lucky. Later on in 1993 he rushed to a scene of an attack by a U.S. helicopter and was beaten to death by angry women who made the connection between his pale skin and western imperialism which robbed them of their children.

We were part of a generation of journalist who knew that it was not right just inserting yourself into the mayhem of war with civilians being bombed each day, without reaching out to the other side to at least offer a comment, a response to the news we were producing. But on the ground it often wasn’t possible; only when returning to your home country where calls can be made.

In those days there was more honour amongst all those practicing, whether they be journalists, government officials, defence ministries or even khat-chewing militias. It has taken the Yugoslavian war for all of these groups to wake up to taking advantage of the tricky position journalists find themselves in when covering war. They have seen that the speed to get the gory pictures and file the story with the ghastly details of death caused by modern warfare eclipses the need for due diligence. The ‘embedding’ of journalists, which really started in 1991 with the Gulf War, more or less creates a hostage situation between the powerful army and its facilities and the journalists who are happy to sign up the Stockholm Syndrome type reporting – which, in a nutshell, is a sort of stenography of what generals say at press conferences and a tacit agreement to report on the staged scenes which the army takes you to cover. And it’s the same with militias. Journalists who went to Norther Syria to cover the Syrian war soon found themselves embedded with ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates who would protect them while taking them to scenes which they wanted covered. There is a certain amount of obligation from the journalist to not do their due diligence and reach out – via telephone and internet – to fact check what they’re being shown as tangible news material as such an act would be considered discourteous to the hosts. And so in this set up, fake news thrives as the incumbents who hold the journalists can barely resist the opportunity to spin stories. They have the journalists as a hostage and he/she is under pressure to write stories each day.

Staged chemical attacks in Syria

And so ‘embedding’ comes in many forms and it merely encourages the polarised set up which all wars now have, which we saw in Yugoslavia and other places. In Syria, we saw the same story where so many big title journalists even succumbed to writing reports based on finding sources on social media in places being bombed. The reporting became so jaded, the process so corrupted that it led, in many cases, false reporting on Assad using chemicals on his own people. In at least one case, there is overwhelming evidence now, for those who wish to examine in on line, to prove without any doubt that one such attack was staged entirely by Al Qaeda affiliates, with local Syrian actors being requested to stage a minor performance for the cameras – video footage shamefully used by the BBC to support a narrative which ticked a box for them and their journalists camped in Beirut.

Journalists these days in war zones don’t cross the line, even on a technical level with their smartphones such is the new ‘standard’ which all media giants are operating by – which has merely encouraged a new all time low of pseudo journalism from other journalists struggling to make their way up. It reminds me of a CNN producer who, so unable to cope with her assignment in Morocco, had decided on the beginning, middle and end of her report before she even got on the plane to carry out the ‘King clinging on to power’ story which was entirely wrong and planted in her head by her Emirati lover in Washington. The media giants who sent their big named journalists to Ukraine had already decided the story, the narrative that all must abide to which is that Zelensky is some sort of Ce Gevara figure and squeaky clean, that the war is not at all the west’s fault and so no responsibility shall be placed on its leaders since the early 90s and that all Ukrainians are angels and that we should all adopt one, like adorable Labradors. They’ve even invented the perfect explanation how they can carry out this extreme partisan news reporting, which is, conveniently that “Putin is mad”. Or perhaps intel agencies helped them out with this folly.

Journalists became the combatants

What iconic journalists from the UK who hail from a once esteemed investigative news outfit like BBC Panorama won’t be investigating is the worryingly high level of Ukrainians who supported far right fanatical groups there for decades which were funded by the CIA and the State department. The odious John Sweeny will not go against the grain of the newsroom indoctrination and present Zelensky as corrupt, if not more corrupt, than the leader he ousted in his anti corruption campaign which installed him as president. Sweeney, who claims to be an investigative journalist and who shouldn’t be judged on his mental meltdown while filming a doc about scientologists in the U.S. will no doubt do his reporting on the gore which is in front of his eyes but not look to hard for reasons behind it. A German journalist sent to Dresden during the second world war to film the antihalation of the RAF bombers on women and children might take a similar line by not blaming Hitler for invading Poland in 1939.

We should not expect much from Mr Sweeney or the BBC Panorama team who I have actually worked for briefly and know only too well how their own personal careers come before anything which remotely whiffs of raw, vociferous journalism. In 2017, I found Britain’s most wanted gangster who fled the UK in the 1990s after an FBI sting to net him failed. The individual, who was hiding in Greece, was prepared to tell Panorama the names and addresses of the top twenty heroine importers in the UK. I failed to convince the producer, who only wanted her idea of him spilling the beans on UK customs agents’ corruption, to repair a previous poor report she had made have more gravitas. Britain’s biggest ever double agent (heroine importer and paid super grass by the UK government who was protected by Jack Straw) was let go due to personal ambitions, office politics and rank stupidity. So much for BBC Panorama being an investigation team digging deep and finding great stories which set the media agenda. Just politics. People’s own greed and self fulfilment. Corruption.

I have stopped watching TV news from the Ukraine as I can see the A-B-C of how the sloppiest war reporting is carried out without the slightest effort for any western journalists to at least look beyond the bodies and twisted limbs for nuance, which has become the collateral damage of all journalism these days. Recently a number of western journalists have been killed in Ukraine which saddens me of course. But if you begin to understand how journalists have crossed a line and become combatants when they either embed themselves with the governments, armies or even the victims they are writing about, then it’s easier to understand why they have become targets themselves. I once used to feel guilty about not helping people who were suffering. The photo by the South African photojournalist Kevin Carter of the vulture looming over the almost dead infant left on the ground in Southern Sudan by a mother fleeing an attack in 1994 haunts me to this day, as I was there in the same year. But when time has passed and in years to come the truth comes out and we see a more complexed nuanced story about the Ukraine war, the big gun journalists today in Ukraine will feel a shame which will eclipse mine tenfold for being partisan to a over-simplified presentation of a story which will show we have much more blood on our hands in the west than most humble people realise. Western journalists in the Ukraine don’t understand the iconic photograph of the vulture and the dying child in Sudan which Carter took and which gave him nightmares all his life which finally led him to taking his own life in 1993. They wouldn’t miss a heartbeat to stop and help as they have already decided what the story is and their tawdry role in reporting it.

In recent years, many people have become accustomed to thinking about the term “deep state” as something that only applies to the United States. While it is certainly clear that a fifth column has become increasingly embedded across all levels of America’s military, intelligence, bureaucratic, corporate, media and academic influence- very few westerners have any clear idea how this same structure has expressed itself in the nations of Eurasia.

Most relevant for the topic of this present report, we can take as an example the vast western-leaning hive of vipers, oligarchs and liberal technocrats which rose to power under the direction of the CIA during the dark years of shock therapy of the 1990s. Of course, since taking over from Yeltsin in 1999, President Vladimir Putin has gone far to purging many of those treacherous agencies that looted Russia during Perestroika, regaining control of vital institutions, bringing Russia’s military, scientific and intelligence powers back into national hands.

Speaking of this battle on December 9, 2021 at the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, Putin stated:

“In the early 2000s, I’ve cleaned all of them out, but in mid-1990s, we had Central Intelligence Agency employees as advisors and even official employees of the government of the Russian Federation, as we learned later… There were American specialists sitting at our nuclear weapons complex sites, they went to work there, from morning to late night – they had a table and an American flag. They lived there and worked there. They did not need any fine instruments to interfere in our life, because they had control over everything already.”

Putin went on to describe the new CIA-run strategy of asymmetrical warfare utilizing foreign NGOs and rabble-rousing proxies (see: Navalny) within the vast “civil society” apparatus embedded within his nation:

“As soon as Russia started claiming its interests, started to raise its sovereignty, economy and armed forces’ capability, new instruments of influence on our internal political life became needed, including rather fine instruments via various organizations, funded from abroad.”

Of course while these operations have lit many weaker nations on fire in earlier days, the color revolutionary techniques used by the CIA-funded NED, or Open Society Foundations have resulted in very limited successes in Russia where saner heads have cut off many of these operations of funding while illegalizing Soros’ entire organization in 2015 declaring them to be “threats to state security”. Although Russia was 25 years behind schedule on this matter, banning Soros put them into the special club of nations that got their acts together led by China who had the wits to ban Soros in 1989, illegalizing his Open Society operations and arresting its agents (including CPC General Secretary and Soros agent extraordinaire Zhao Ziyang).

After recapturing key strategic interests from private clutches during his early years in power, Putin established a new set of ultimatums that he expected the liberal technocrats and oligarchs to adhere to: play by the rules set out by him or face the consequences. Some went to jail, and many went to London for sanctuary (often buying mansions with their ill-begotten gains in an area that came to be known as “Moscow on the Thames”). Still others stayed behind to play by the rules. Perhaps some did adapt to this new reality, but other forces continued to act as a fifth column- often keeping their claws firmly sunk into the levers of finance in Russia’s IMF-influenced central banking architecture and local regional power centers.

It was to these fifth columnists that Putin addressed his remarks on March 15 of this year saying:

“Yes, of course they [the West] will bet on the so-called Fifth Column. Our national traitors. On those who earn money here, with us, but live there. And they live not even in the geographical sense of the word but according to their thoughts. According to their slavish consciousness… many of these people, by their very nature, are mentally located exactly there, and not here. Not with our people. Not with Russia. This is, in their opinion, a sign of belonging to a higher caste, to a higher race. Such people are ready to sell their own mothers if only they were allowed to sit in the hallway of this very highest caste… They do not understand at all that if they are needed by this so-called “higher caste”, then they are needed only as expendable material in order to use them to inflict maximum damage on our people.”

The myopic habit of looking only at the USA or European fifth columnists undermining the sovereignty of nation states over the past decades while ignoring Eurasia, has caused many well-meaning people to presume falsely that nations like Russia or China can be treated as monolithic institutions with either a “good” or “bad” label attached to them. Such oversimplifications unfortunately result in minds susceptible to much misinformation, which there is no shortage to be found amidst our age of psychological warfare operations, media spin and narrative reframing.

Ignorance of the battle currently being waged between genuine nationalists surrounding Putin vs this other western-directed fifth column will ensure fatal errors in judgement and a misdiagnosis of our current crisis. Even worse, vital opportunities for broader policy solutions requisite to empower sovereign nation states will be lost and with this loss, any capacity to engage in proper combat with an emerging totalitarian world order will be destroyed.

Chubais Jumps Ship

One of the most blatant examples of leading Fifth Columnists who “sell their own mothers to sit in the hallway of this very highest caste” has been the figure of Anatoly Chubais who has recently announced his departure from Russia (hopefully permanently) in order to seek safer terrain in Turkey. In this leap into safer sanctuary, Chubais has abandoned his role as ‘Special Representative for Relations with International Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals’ at the UN.

Chubais played one of the most destructive roles of any living politician while working with the CIA-run Yeltsin government as a “Soros-young reformer” alongside Yegor Gaidar and other western tools who were recruited by the west to run the sacking and disintegration of Russia during the 1990s. Acting as Deputy Prime Minister for Economic and Financial Policy between 1992-96, Chubais oversaw the privatization of all strategic sectors of the Russian economy alongside Harvard’s Jeffrey Sachs, Rhodes Scholar Strobe Talbott, a coterie of sociopathic oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsy, Platon Lebedev and Boris Berezovsky (many of whom formed Chubais’ ‘Group of 7’ in 1996).

Chubais and Geidar pioneered the infamous “voucher system” which underpinned the multi-phased looting operation dubbed Operation Hammer by Bush Sr’s CIA starting in 1991. William Engdahl rigorously documented this dense period of privatizations which saw over 15,000 firms privatized between 1992-1994. New oligarchs like Berezovsky were able to use these vouchers purchased from starving Russians, to buy the oil giant Sibnet (worth $3 billion) for only $100 million and Khodorkovsky bought 78% of the shares in Yukos (a $5 billion value) for only $310 million. Soros himself bragged that he dropped over two billion dollars into Russia during this looting period.

Chubais had been an early founder of Perestroika clubs in St. Petersburg alongside such figures as Yegor Gaidar (future Prime Minister), Vladimir Kogan (future St Petersburg Bank President) and Alexei Kudrin (future Finance Minister). Upon Gaidar’s death in 2009, Chubais spearheaded the creation of the Gaidar Forum which was designed to take place one week prior to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos and served as a coordinating body of the deep state between the Schwabian technocrats and their Russian soulmates.

In 2013, Putin said of Chubais and his CIA handlers:

“We learned today that officers of the United States’ CIA operated as consultants to Anatoly Chubais. But it is even funnier that upon returning to the U.S., they were prosecuted for violating their country’s laws and illegally enriching themselves in the course of privatization in the Russian Federation.”

Despite Putin having clearly identified Chubais as a CIA asset, evidence of something very powerful protecting the financier was seen as he not only avoided being purged as so many others during Putin’s tenure, but even regained a large degree of influence as chairman of the executive board of the state-run technology company Rusnano from 2008 until 2020. During this time, Chubais also found himself serving as advisory council member of JP Morgan Chase, and the leading force behind decarbonization schemes in Russia driven by green alternative energy boondoggles which serve as a major component of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.

During his 12 year tenure, Chubais used Rusnano as an instrument to fund and seed windmill and solar power development, provided $400 million to Hevek Solar (Russia’s biggest solar energy company) and created a $520 million Wind Energy Development Fund.

Although Chubais’ offices at Rusnano were raided the day following the arrest of Russian finance minister (and fellow swamp creature Alexei Ulyokaev on November 16, 2021), his protectors ensured that while his days at the company would come to an end, he would avoid arrest, and go onto new destructive endeavors. What was his next assignment?

By the end of December 2021, it was announced that Chubais was made Russian Presidential envoy to the United Nations to coordinate Sustainable Development Goals. In this position, Chubais had shamelessly called for adapting Russia’s economy to the UN’s climate market and fully submitting to the dictates of the IMF and World Bank saying on January 8, 2022:

“I am convinced that the Russian climate market will be extremely attractive for international investment. So it is necessary to facilitate the access of Russian entrepreneurs to receive funding from abroad for alternate projects. To do this, it is necessary to achieve harmonization of the basic rules of the Russian Market being created in this area with leading international organizations- the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development”.

Not only has Chubais spearheaded the “greening of Russian energy” according to the Great Reset Agenda (which unites the two-fold manufactured crises of climate change and covid-19 into one package), but Chubais also used Rusnano to fund the growth of a foreign directed pharmaceutical complex within the heart of Russia. One major scandal emerged recently as Russian pharmaceutical giant and COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Nanolek received billions of rubles from Rusnano in 2020 and 2021 enriching the husband-wife duo of Tatyana Golikova and Viktor Khristenko (whose son is a major shareholder in the company).

While much can be said about other fifth columnists still embedded within Russia’s civil service and private sector, the smell of new purges is certainly in the air.

A Sea Change Now Underway

Powerful western forces representing the “higher castes” have severed ties with Russia and with those lost ties goes lost protection for many figures who have slept soundly at night despite their treacherous hearts. The World Economic Forum broke off ties on March 8  along with a multitude of foreign WEF partner corporations like Goldman Sachs, Deutschebank, Amazon, Visa, Paypal, Mastercard, Apple, IBM, Unilever, and Pepsico (to name a few).

Moves are quickly being made to empower nationalist forces to take increased control over Russia’s economy led by Sergey Glaziev’s new project to create a China-EAEU alternative financial/monetary system with increased national controls over finance and long-term planning. Gaining control of the financial sector which has long been under the strong influence of western oligarchical interests is vital if Russia is going to be able to not only weather the coming storm but come out of it with the economic sovereignty and power to build those large-scale projects needed for Putin’s aspirations for a Far Eastern and Arctic civilizational growth paradigm.

Although Chubais only represents but one large rat who has chosen this current moment to jump ship, others will certainly follow, and perhaps a new fear of god might awaken in the hearts of others who chose this moment of crisis to walk a more noble path as patriots of Russia as the world enters a new more multipolar future.

I think it is here fitting to end with a few remarks by President Putin who stated “the Russian people will be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths. I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to respond to any challenges”.

“You’re denying the agency of Ukrainians!”

This is a line you’ve probably had bleated at you by propagandized empire livestock if you’ve engaged in online debate about the role western powers have played in paving the way to this war.

One of the many, many tricks that imperial spinmeisters have pulled out of their hats in their shockingly frenetic campaign to manage the narrative about what’s happening in Ukraine is to insist that it’s outrageous and disgusting to suggest that Ukraine is being used as a sacrificial pawn in the grand chessboard maneuverings of the US-centralized empire, because it is denying the “agency” of that nation. The argument is that Ukraine freely chose to enter into the situation in which it now finds itself, with no outside pressure or influence of any kind whatsoever.

All these circulating arguments about “NATO expansion” ignore that Ukrainians have agency.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) March 13, 2022

Seemingly overnight it became not just wrong to say that the US hegemon has played a role in giving rise to this war, but actually monstrous and evil. My online notifications are currently flooded with furious empire apologists screaming at me for assigning any degree of responsibility in this conflict to western power structures with the kind of vitriol people normally reserve for Holocaust deniers or pedophelia advocates.

Imperial narrative managers have even been working overtime to make the word “westsplaining” happen, which is their progressive-sounding term for when one makes the self-evident observation that western powers influence world events. Mainstream westerners are actively trained to regurgitate lines like “Stop westsplaining to Ukrainians about coups and proxy conflicts! You’re denying their agency!”

Calling this a “proxy war” between Russia and the United States or calling Kyiv a “puppet regime” of Washington is strictly taboo now. That Ukraine has lacked independent agency in this war and the events leading up to it is something you are simply not allowed to say.

Well, I’m saying it. This is a proxy war. Kyiv is a puppet regime. Ukraine does not have independent agency in any meaningful way. This is not the fault of the Ukrainian people, who are obviously far and away the greatest victims of the Russian invasion, but of the giant western power structure which deliberately worked to take away the nation’s agency many years before the invasion took place.

I mean, my god. The US and its allies are pouring billions of dollars worth of weapons into Ukraine from around the world, the CIA has been training Ukrainians to kill Russians, the US intelligence cartel is directly sharing military intelligence with Kyiv as we speak, and this follows US-backed coups in Ukraine in 2014 and in 2004 before that.

This is a proxy war. This is exactly the thing that a proxy war is. The only “agency” Ukraine has is the Central Intelligence kind.

All these circulating arguments about “NATO expansion” ignore that Ukrainians have agency.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) March 13, 2022

In an excellent article for Multipolarista titled “Ukrainian leftist criticizes Western war drive with Russia: US is using Ukraine as ‘cannon fodder’”, Ukrainian-American Yuliy Dubovyk writes the following:

Like any other US puppet regime, Ukraine doesn’t have any real independence. Kiev has been actively pushed to confront Russia by every US administration, against the will of the majority of Ukrainian people.

…

The support for Ukraine that fills the Western media now is not out of real solidarity with the people of Ukraine. If that were the case, the US wouldn’t have overthrown our government twice in a decade; it wouldn’t have supported the policies that made us the poorest country in Europe; it wouldn’t have fueled a brutal civil war for the past eight years.

The reason US media outlets and politicians are all backing Ukraine now is because they want to use the Ukrainian military and civilian population as cannon fodder in a proxy war with a political adversary.

Yes indeedy. Amid all the phony profile pic activism and concern trolling about denial of Ukraine’s “agency”, no concern whatsoever has been shown for actual, known assaults on Ukrainian independence by the US-centralized empire.

Where was all this reverence for Ukraine’s “agency” in 2004, when The Guardian was reporting that “while the gains of the orange-bedecked ‘chestnut revolution’ are Ukraine’s, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes”?

Where was the respect for Ukraine’s “agency” in 2014, when a leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland (now working on Ukraine under the Biden administration) and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt showed US officials casually discussing who they were going to select as Ukraine’s next Prime Minister following a US-backed coup in Kyiv?

Where was all this respect for Ukraine’s “agency” in 2018, when Joe Biden openly boasted before the Council on Foreign Relations that he had used his power as Obama’s Vice President to brazenly interfere in Ukraine’s judicial system?

Obama VP Joseph Biden brags about how he rigged the judicial system of another country. pic.twitter.com/BC4u7AUPHB

— Defend Assange Campaign (@DefendAssange) January 27, 2018

The US power alliance does not care about Ukraine’s sovereignty beyond what measures need to be taken to actively subvert it. When people object to criticisms of the way the empire has actively robbed Ukrainians of any real agency, what they are actually doing is defending the most powerful empire that has ever existed from attempts to highlight its malfeasance.

I’m not just spouting off about a far away nation from my safe home here in Australia, for the record. This is a dynamic which affects my country directly, and is very likely to affect it a lot more as the empire’s “great power competition” with China heats up.

It is very likely that in the not-too-distant future, Australia will end up playing a crucial role in the empire’s grand chessboard maneuverings to stop the rise of China. When that occurs, I will most certainly be saying that we are being used as pawns in a proxy conflict, and I will most certainly be saying that our agency in this matter has been stolen from us.

As in Ukraine, there have been US-backed coups in Australia not once but twice. This nation is now functionally little more than a US military and intelligence base with a smattering of suburbs and kangaroos, which is why the puppet regime in our capital Canberra has done nothing whatsoever to end Washington’s brutal persecution of Australian journalist Julian Assange. John Mearsheimer, now the subject of great controversy for his completely accurate predictions years ago that US and NATO actions would lead to this exact war in Ukraine, told an Australian think tank in 2019 that the US will destroy Australia if Canberra doesn’t align with imperial agendas against Beijing. And he was right.

And yes, just as there are Ukrainians supporting the imperial line against Moscow, when the time comes for Australia to make great sacrifices for US unipolarist agendas against the Chinese government there will absolutely be Australians supporting it. Because of a massive propaganda campaign in this nation facilitated by our Murdoch-dominated press and imperial narrative management operations like the empire-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, there are many Australians who intensely despise China right now. I know. I’ve met them.

But that won’t mean our sovereignty wasn’t robbed from us, by mass-scale oligarchic psyops, by CIA coups, by secret deals, by the threat of knowing we’d be immediately attacked by a murderous empire if we tried to pivot to Beijing or even to simply espouse a neutral posture. What’s true of Ukraine is also true of Australia: we have no meaningful agency in the most important decisions made by this nation.

Denying the western role in subverting Ukrainian sovereignty doesn’t benefit ordinary Ukrainians, it hurts them. You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand, and until there’s widespread understanding of the way the US empire uses proxies to advance its agendas of global domination, nothing can be done to stop these ugly proxy wars from happening.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine takes war to a new level of information warfare. Over the past three weeks, Western mainstream media has unleashed a tsunami of false information and distortion that has swept many people off their feet in disarray.

Appropriately, if not actually intended, on March 15 – the Ides of March no less – we had front pages blaring that Russia’s troops were facing defeat in two weeks. The NATO-backed Kiev regime forces “had Russian troops on the run”, or so we were told.

On the same date – famous for ominous predictions – Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky was reported by Western media as urging Russian soldiers to surrender such was, it was implied, the futile no-win situation for them.

So make a note of that. By the end of this month, as the Western media messaging goes, Russia will be defeated by the NATO-backed Ukrainian rag-tag of NeoNazi brigades. Not only that but as U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and American social media corporations have intimated Russian President Vladimir Putin may be assassinated.

The concoction of Shakespeare and Julius Caesar as a way to portray the conflict in Ukraine finds a handy cipher in the form of Ukraine’s Zelensky, the man who formerly was a comedy actor before he became president in 2019. Zelensky last week addressed the British House of Parliament by video to standing ovations, with stirring words channeling the famous English Bard and also wartime hero Winston Churchill. It was political theater written by Zelensky’s handlers in the CIA and MI6.

The actor-politician is pretty convincing too. He has played up his purported Jewish ancestry and Holocaust relatives as a way to undermine Russia’s claims of Neo-Nazi paramilitaries over-running Ukraine. Russia’s information on the Azov Battalion and other fascist formations is corroborated and well-documented by independent sources.

Zelensky has been at once a man of many parts. Some Western media remark on his high-profile public appearances rallying Ukrainians to resist, yet at the same time, incongruously, he has also been busy making defiant speeches dressed in military fatigues from what appears to be a secret bunker. That alleged precaution, we are informed (sic), is to prevent the Russian military from discovering his exact location and assassinating him with an airstrike.

A glitch in the drama – seemingly unnoticed by the fawning media – were reports of the prime ministers from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia flying to Kiev on March 15 to meet with Zelensky and to demonstrate European solidarity.

Really? If Zelensky was hiding in bunkers out of fear for his life from Russian missiles and if Kiev was such a war zone from alleged indiscriminate airstrikes – as the Western media report wall-to-wall – would these European leaders really venture into the Ukrainian capital?

The conflict in Ukraine appears to be like no other in terms of the rampant false information and virtual realities that the Western media are using. It’s reminiscent of the Western hysteria over Syria and the “Siege of Aleppo” in late 2016 which turned out to be liberated by the Syrian army and its Russian allies from Western-backed terrorists. Images of explosions and civilian casualties attributed to Russian forces have been identified as being clipped from other wars, locations and years. Airstrikes in Gaza by Israeli forces have been reported as occurring in Ukrainian cities. Even Hollywood disaster movies have provided images recycled for “reports” of alleged Russian violations.

No doubt the Russian military intervention in Ukraine has caused suffering and displacement. What war has ever not? A Russian news program was disrupted when one of its employees mounted an anti-war protest on air.

But this war could have been avoided if the U.S. and its NATO allies had heeded Russia’s long-time security concerns. The weaponization of Ukraine since the CIA-orchestrated coup in 2014 and the unleashing of Neo-Nazi forces against Russian-speaking people were bound to result in war. The last straw was when Russian efforts at negotiating were met with relentless intransigence by the NATO powers.

Moscow says its military operation launched on February 24 will continue until the Kiev regime agrees to foreswear joining NATO, to eradicate its Neo-Nazi paramilitaries, and recognize Russia’s historic claim to Crimea as well as recognize the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Zelensky has responded erratically like the puppet on a string he indubitably is. There have been four rounds of negotiations between his representatives and Russia. The Ukrainian CIA-MI6 puppet has at times talked about giving up on NATO membership and acceding to Russia’s territorial claims. Then he flips by giving defiant resistance speeches and calling for Russia’s surrender. The conclusion is that Zelensky and his regime are not serious about negotiating a resolution. Their function is to string out conflict as long as possible in order to undermine Russia and prolong the misery of the Ukrainian population – many of whom are glad to see Russian forces get rid of this corrupt regime.

The Western reporting on the conflict in Ukraine like Zelensky and his regime is something of an elaborate propaganda chimera. We are told the war is due entirely to the mad ravings of an evil Russian tyrant called Vladimir Putin – who, ludicrously, is comparable to Hitler. Western trashy tabloids as well as high-brow people like the US-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warn us that “Mad Vlad” is ready to use nuclear weapons or chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. This is from Western media whose governments and military establishments were running biowarfare labs in Ukraine and who are training Neo-Nazi death squads.

Indeed, we may beware the Ides of March. Western propaganda is foretelling the downfall of Russia. The media are making Russia look desperate and depraved ready to use weapons of mass destruction. What for? A seeming self-fulfilling prophesy where they get to play savior of Ukraine? The really desperate side is the side that is really desperate.

Lars Findsen, Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service (FE) chief—the equivalent of the U.S.’s CIA director—walked into Copenhagen city court with three large police escorts pressed against the country’s leading spy charged with treason. Findsen is forbidden to speak to reporters, but they understood his opinion about his arrest when they saw the paperback in his hand: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.^[1]

He was one of four FE and PET (Danish Security and Intelligence Service—the police equivalent of the FBI) employees arrested last December 8. Findsen was charged with violating Criminal Code §109—“disclosing highly classified information from the intelligence services”—an act of “treason” punishable by 12 years’ imprisonment.^[2]

Copenhagen City Judge Merete Engholm allowed his name to be released in a subsequent court hearing, January 10, 2022, at his request. Findsen told reporters from a distance: “I want the preliminary charge brought forward, and I plead not guilty. This is completely insane.”

Findsen has since been forbidden to say one word to any media from any distance. The other three persons’ names and whereabouts are unknown to the media and public. It is not even known if they are formally charged and awaiting trial, either in prison or at home.

The prosecution and the judge refuse to disclose what information on what secret matter(s) Findsen allegedly disclosed or to whom he disclosed them. At the end of the 10-hour court hearing, the judge continued his remand detention until March 3.

DR court reporter Trine Maria Ilsøe explained that Findsen’s detention allows him television but no access to IT or telephone. He is allowed a few visitors but cannot speak about the case. Guards watch. (DR is Denmark’s largest media outlet—online, radio and TV—and is state-supported.)

This case can well be associated with the U.S.’s Espionage Act, Britain’s Official Secrets Act, and what the U.S./UK are doing to Julian Assange now. Yet the mass media do not mention any of that. It seems Julian Assange’s name is taboo.

Since the judge and government will not say what the case is all about, reporters predict that we may never be told, which leads to even more speculation. The fact that the judge is keeping Findsen confined until trial—which has no time limit and some remanded prisoners have been kept in jail for more than a year—also raises questions of lack of respect for human rights.

The judge simply agreed with the state that, if he were released, he could talk to the media and/or in some way hinder the police investigation, or even continue to commit whatever “crime” he is charged with.

DR produced a video in the style of a future detective novel. It speaks of three possible issues that could lay behind these arrests:

1) FE delivered a recent report to the government about children of Danish citizens involved with Islamic State terrorists. They are now interned in a Kurd-controlled concentration camp in Syria. FE told the Danish government, which does not want them returned, that they could be trained in terrorism and return to Denmark to do damage.

2) A Danish citizen, Ahmed Samsam—assumed by Danish journalists to have been an FE agent, and perhaps a PET agent as well—was arrested in Spain for aiding the Islamic State there. He received eight years in prison, and apparently Danish intelligence personnel are upset that their government has not aided him.

Ahmad Samsam [Source: theolivepress.es]

Journalists were again kept out of the February 4 hearing by double-locked doors. They protested the lack of transparency, sparking speculation that Findsen may be considered “too open toward the media.”

Lars Kjeldsen, one of Findsen’s two lawyers, said the 57-year-old career intelligence officer is “sad and shocked.” “He has cooperated fully…I remain baffled that it should not be possible to make public the charges and the basis for his detention.” “I think there would be a considerable debate if we actually [understood] what is going on here,” Kieldsen told reporters.

Kjeldsen is not allowed to comment on the substance of the case for fear of violating the same Criminal Code §109. Media headlines in recent days have spoken of this case as an “Unprecedented Scandal,” “Spectacular,” “Violent,” “Internal Chaos” and “Something’s Rotten in Denmark”!

The right-wing daily, Jyllands-Posten, editorialized that “Denmark’s security and credibility stand to become the big loser” no matter how the case ends, and that it “undoubtedly must trigger the question: What is rotten in Denmark?”

Several of these silver-coated metal boxes containing prosecution documents were carried into court. [Source: dr.dk]

Bonnichsen wrote that Findsen made “the largest turnaround process in PET’s history. We created a modern organization with greater openness about the work of the service, with a website, annual report; meetings were held with the press and interviews were given. I find it infinitely difficult to see that such a profile has a motive for national harm, but let the process determine this.”

Five days after Findsen and the other three were arrested, the three-judge government commission delivered its year-long report on the FE whistleblower case: “Acquitted: There is no basis for criticism of either FE or its employees in this case.” No more details were forthcoming. [Kommission frikender Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste | avisendanmark.dk]

“There are no grounds for critique,” informed Minister Trine Bramsen. “I am very satisfied with that conclusion.” Nevertheless, Findsen is not back on the job as FE chief but in prison.

Apparently, that has had no effect on the government’s prosecution or the judge concerned. We do not know if it has even been brought out in court, as lawyers are forbidden to speak about the proceedings. Nevertheless, anyone following this grave matter must wonder why the government’s investigation by judges cleared Findsen (maybe the others as well), but the police (PET) investigation resulted in arrest with the severest of charges against intelligence officers.

To confound matters all the more, the Ministry of Justice has also charged Claus Hjort Frederiksen, a leading hawk member of Parliament and defense minister (2016-19), with the same law leveled against Findsen. Hjort revealed this in mid-January; the Justice ministry has been silent.

“I can confirm that I have been charged under Section 109 of the Penal Code for violating the limits of my freedom of expression. I have expressed myself as a member of parliament on a political matter and I have nothing further to add at this stage. But I could never dream of doing anything that could harm Denmark or Denmark’s interests.”

Former Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen (Venstre Party) observing tank war games in Denmark, 2017. [Source: oifi.dk]

“I came home after a massage on December 20 last year. Two policemen came to my door and handed me a citation that I was charged with Criminal Code §109. I was shocked. I have not been charged with any criminal offense in my life. This charge is about nationally harmful activities with a sentence of up to 12 years in prison.” The charge does not explain what he is supposed to have done.

Hjort has not been jailed, as members of Parliament have certain immunity rights that can be removed by parliament only in exceptional cases. That could be forthcoming; however, the Ministry of Justice has made no comment on the matter. Hjort was recently sent material that he had violated required silence about “state secrets,” which he says is not the case.

Hjort believes the claim has to do with a television interview and newspaper articles he participated in more than a year ago. He said he did not state anything that had not already come out in the media. A former head of FE, Thomas Ahrenkiel, had been one of four leading FE men suspended in August 2020 after a whistleblower informed Danish media about what he considered to be constitutionally illegal surveillance of all Danish citizens and other residents, which is sent to NSA. Denmark has also spied upon its closest European leaders. [See below.]

Edward Snowden first revealed in 2013 some of this spying, XKEYSCORE, which also involves spying within the “international community.”

Hjort had also stated that Denmark is part of the U.S.’s 9 Eyes: UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand—5 Eyes—plus the Netherlands, Norway and France. There is also “14 Eyes,” which includes Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Italy and Spain. The U.S. and UK started the first Eyes just after WWII to exchange “security secrets.”

The first 2 eyes, U.S.-UK, signed an agreement on March 5, 1946, to spy upon the Soviet Union.

Already the year before—at the close of the war in Europe—Winston Churchill had devised Operation Unthinkable—a surprise attack on Soviet forces in Europe, with the possible use of atomic weapons against Moscow, Stalingrad and Kiev. It did not happen because he lost the July 1945 election to Labour Party leader Clement Attlee. Additionally, President Harry Truman did not have enough atomic bombs. The few he had were used the next month against Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The only official restrictions set upon the Eyes is that they must not spy on their own citizens. However, Edward Snowden proved that the U.S. does so. While U.S. authorities have lied about the fact that they spy upon everyone in the U.S., Britain passed a law—the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016—granting the state the power to record anyone’s browsing history, text messages and connection logs.

The USA PATRIOT Act, following 9/11, allows the government to force social media to turn over any information they have on customers—that means all of us.

Hjort’s former political party leader and PM, Lars Loekke Rasmussen (Venstre Party) called charges against him an “over-reaction…which could have been avoided…here lies the germ of a political scandal.”

What has been unraveling for 18 months seems to show that Denmark is the U.S.’s lead Eye into spying on other European allies. The Nordic countries share the same original language and cultural roots, including having been the warring slave-trading Vikings. Sweden and especially Norway were also under Danish colonial control for centuries.

Spying on them and their own citizens has nothing to do with spying upon the U.S./Denmark’s new “Cold War enemies”: Russia, China and Iran.

Background on FE-NSA Spying Since 1990s Eyes, and Since 2008 Through Fiber Cables

In August 2020, I wrote the first of several CAM pieces about this unprecedented exposure of rampant spying on all Danes and other residents, and other Europeans, all to please the United States of America’s self-purported interests in managing the world’s affairs.

A military whistleblower first reported on illegal espionage to the military leadership in 2015. His superiors ignored his reports. Four years later, he revealed illegal spying to the new Danish Intelligence Oversight Committee (TET), and later to Danish media.

Some information about what appears to be long-standing illegalities in the Defense Intelligence Service, which TET presented on August 24, includes:

1. Withholding “key and crucial information to government authorities” and the oversight committee between 2014 and today;
2. Illegal activities even before 2014;
3. Telling “lies” to policymakers;
4. Illegal surveillance on Danish citizens, including a member of the oversight committee. [Some of this illegal spying had been shared with unnamed sources (perhaps the U.S.?)];
5. Unauthorized activities have been shelved; and
6. The FE failed to follow up on indications of espionage within areas of the Ministry of Defense.

TET was created in 2014 with five civilian members, experts in the rule of law, chief judges and professors. It has eight employees and a budget of only $1.3 million. TET told the media that, in November 2019, it received from unnamed whistleblower(s) four thick ring binders of classified material showing FE illegalities. When TET delivered its report to the government, it asked Parliament to create a whistleblower scheme for the FE, which it has not done.

Operation Dunhammer is the code name for an FE internal investigation, begun in 2012, concerning NSA sucking all surveillance out of Denmark. Who knew about that? Was it sanctioned by top Danish leaders over decades? Those questions are at the heart of the current growing scandal.

“Four leading Defense Intelligence Service personnel were suspended on Monday, August 24, pending an independent investigation into serious charges of illegalities—amounting to what the liberal Danish daily Politiken is calling the greatest ‘life scandal in its history’.”

Lars Findsen, his predecessor, Thomas Ahrenkiel, and two other current intelligence officers, were temporarily suspended. A fifth was suspended later. After Bramsen was bombarded with protests from opposition politicians, they were placed in military positions other than intelligence until a three-judge commission investigated the matter for more than a year, until December 2021. The government would not explain what it would and would not look into.

“We cannot expect that most of the possible illegalities committed will be made public,” Bramsen said. “Denmark’s intelligence services are connected to and dependent upon foreign powers [i.e., the U.S.]. Denmark could be compromised if secrets were revealed.”

Claus Hjort speculated for the daily Ekstra Bladet that he might be in trouble with the Ministry of Justice, because he had told the media that then-Defense Minister Bramsen should have handled the sensitive information about FE/NSA spying much better. She should have prevented TET from sending out a news release with its critique of FE, and that she should not have suspended the four leading FE figures.

For several months, DR worked with journalists from Sweden (SVT), Norway, Germany (Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, WDR) and France (Le Monde) on these developments. Their work forced some of the 35 national leaders, known to be spied upon to come forward.

“We demand to be fully informed about matters concerning Swedish citizens, companies and interests,” Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told national broadcaster SVT.

The leaders of Germany and France said that spying on them is “unacceptable among allies.”

PM Merete Frederiksen’s Social Democrat (SD) government neither confirmed nor denied the assertions, simply stating that such spying is “unacceptable among allies.”

Macron and Merkel. [Source: a2news.com]

This was one of the key questions for Defense Minister Bramsen and Justice Minister Nick Haekkerup when they were in consultation with the Folketing [Parliament] Defense Committee. They would not reply “for fear there are major risks if confidential information from the intelligence services comes out publicly” said Minister Bramsen. Apparently, the committee did not ask if the government would continue spying on its own citizens.

NSA and FE signed an agreement in 2008 that enables NSA to tap huge amounts of data sourced from Danish fiber-optic communication cables passing through Denmark. This metadata is stored by the Danish Defense Intelligence Service in a center called Sandagergãrd built with NSA guidance and technical assistance on the small Danish island of Amager to which the NSA has access.

Sandagergãrd is one of three Danish military-intelligence “listening posts” which trawl through and analyze global internet data seeking information, for example, on what Terma, Denmark’s largest weapons firm, has. This is clearly an intrusion on capitalism’s basic principle and need for free-market competition.

Danish military base’s data center at Sandagergãrd close to Copenhagen, on the island of Amager, to which NSA has access. [Source: datacenterdynamics.com]

In 2013, XKEYSCORE was NSA’s most advanced electronic surveillance program, which Edward Snowden exposed. Another NSA whistleblower, William Binney, had designed a program prior to XKEYSCORE, which could be used for extensive surveillance. He opposed using it to spy on entire populations, and resigned in 2001 after 30 years’ service. When XKEYSCORE was designed, it had greater capabilities than ECHELON in that it could access all users’ emails, all computer communications, and even spy on us from our computer screens that have cameras.

[Source: covertactionmagazine.com]

In 2016, the government decided to buy 27 F-35s to replace F-16s. The price today is around $10 billion, which is double the country’s annual defense budget. After years of technical problems, the first F-35s for Denmark were to have arrived two years ago. Not one is yet in sight, fortunately.

Besides land-based electronic surveillance, there are hundreds of transoceanic submarine cables carrying information between many countries. For decades, Denmark has had a key cable connected to the U.S., which NSA taps into. In addition, there are new submarine commercial cables.

Denmark and Iraq

The first and last serious case of illegalities connected to the government and its military intelligence service took place in 2004. Major Frank Grevil was an analyst at FE. He led a report that concluded there was no solid evidence that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction.

This information was forwarded to then-Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen who lied to the public, stating he was “absolutely certain” Iraq had such weapons.

Rasmussen convinced a majority in parliament to declare war on Iraq because it had such weapons—as though that is a global crime in itself but not for the West. Hundreds of Danish soldiers and mercenaries were sent to Iraq to murder thousands. Military aircraft and ships were also later sent to Afghanistan and Libya. Some 50 Danish warriors were killed in a 15-year period.

Grevil’s conscience bothered him so he let the media know the prime minister had lied. He was identified and charged under Criminal Code §152 for violating a secrecy obligation. Since it was only an internal report to the PM, the more severe §109 provision was not used. He received the maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment, serving four months, and lost his job. The prime minister, on the other hand, served two terms and the U.S. then rewarded him with the top NATO post.

Major Grevil speaks to the media about the case. [Source: alchetron.com]

PM Rasmussen doused in “red blood.” The activists were jailed for four months (serving 70 days in isolation), fined $40,000 plus court and damage costs of approximately $200,000. [Source: BT]

[Source: twitter.com]

Danish Journalists Could Be Imprisoned in U.S. for Whistleblower Revelations

Denmark’s Constitution (Grundlov) from 1849, Chapter 8, §72, is as close as Denmark’s fundamental law comes to the U.S.’s First Amendment guarantee of free press and speech, and the right to privacy.

“The home is inviolable. House investigations, seizures and examinations of letters and other papers, as well as breaches of postal, telegraph and telephone secrecy, where no law confers a special exemption, may be carried out solely on the form of a court order.”

When that law speaks of the “home” it also means the people living in that home, and “other papers” includes today’s e-mails and internet searches. Has any subsequent law changed that guarantee? CAM asked an expert in constitutional law who responded that it would take many hours to determine the answer. Unfortunately, he did not have the time (or, apparently, the interest) to do so.

Is Criminal Code §109 such a possibility? I asked a former member of TET, political science professor Joergen Groennegaard Christensen. He had written in Weekend Avisen that the laws governing state secrets are “very broadly formulated,” “really problematic” and that, in recent years, “intelligence services have been freed from restrictions they were earlier subject to.”

Christensen spoke cautiously due to his “sealed lips duty,” and the fact that he is not an attorney, but he indicated that the constitution is “not absolute”—that one or more laws could be interpreted as making exceptions to civil liberties guarantees.

Given these circumstances, it is certainly ironic that Denmark’s media have not covered England’s extradition trial of the Australian Julian Assange, nor do they openly support him. The U.S. government had long denied that Assange is a publisher but changed course midway in the extradition trial. The U.S. now contends that he is a publisher, thereby asserting that journalists worldwide can be prosecuted in the U.S. for reporting the “U.S.’s national security secrets.”

In December 2020, DR foreign news editor Niels Kvale and I communicated concerning press freedoms and why DR does not cover Julian Assange’s extradition trial.

Kvale responded to my complaint of suppression of this important news. He wrote that “importance is the most important criterion” in making DR’s determination of what to cover.

Extraditing an Australian publisher to the U.S.—which could imprison Assange for 175 years for 17 alleged violations of its Espionage Act—is apparently not important enough. By not covering this trial, let alone not coming out in support of Assange and WikiLeaks, DR may not yet realize that its reporters and editors can also be prosecuted for violating the 1917 Espionage Act. In 1961, the U.S. Congress removed language that restricted the Act’s application to U.S. territory and its inhabitants. Importantly, the motivations for revealing war crimes are not allowed as a defense in U.S. courts. That is a clear warning to all that the U.S. does not abide by basic democratic rights of free press and free speech.

I spoke by telephone with DR editor Kvale about the U.S. government threat. He replied: “I was not aware of that. This sounds interesting. Send me your article and I will inform our journalists.”

Well, a year later, Danish journalists must now realize that the Assange matter is of concern to them. Yet they still do not incorporate Julian’s punishment for publishing factual documentation of state war crimes into their reports. In these months that the media have been reporting what a Danish whistleblower(s) has revealed, and now with the government desperate to worm its way out of a chaotic mess it feels is damaging its cozy relationship with Big Daddy, reporters still refuse to make any association with the legitimate Assange/WikiLeaks work for real democracy: transparency.

Denmark’s’ temporary FE chief, Svend Larsen, and PET chief Finn Borch Andersen personally admonished two dailies, Politiken and Extra Bladet, for suggesting that those arrested on December 9 had divulged information to Danish media about those agencies, that they had committed illegalities to please the U.S.

The spy chiefs also warned other daily newspapers that they have a duty to be “silent” about such secrets. They also threatened to use Criminal Code §109 with 12 years’ imprisonment against them, the same law now being used against FE Chief Findsen.

The Communist Party’s website article on this matter maintains that, since FE and PET warned the media not to reveal any more leaks, at least one article has been stopped from publication.

No doubt, Denmark’s government is emboldened by the British aristocratic “high court” decision to help the U.S. silence all journalists about “national security secrets” by deciding to extradite publisher Julian Assange to a U.S. torture prison.

Edward Snowden told Politiken (January 22) that this is a “democratic scandal.”

By charging whistleblowers with high crimes, the Danish state is “moving in an authoritarian course—punishing people for telling the truth to a population that needs to know,” says the activist-whistleblower. “This should be a screaming red alarm for everybody that something is all wrong.”

Snowden says that Danish and American laws about national security secrets have to do with handing over national secrets to enemies, especially in times of war—that is classic espionage—and should not be spying on their own citizens and friendly neighbors.

Interviewer Sebastian Stryhn Kjekdtoft speculated that whoever the FE whistleblower is who passed on secrets to the oversight committee TET, may have been inspired by Snowden’s 2013 revelations. Snowden says he does not know who he is, but he feels “inspired by that person’s courage and ability to do it. He has captured them [those responsible] breaking the law and the civil rights of everybody in Denmark and the whole world.”

The former CIA/NSA employee turned people’s activist hopes that Danes will be inspired to demand answers from the government instead of allowing a blackout. “I think the Danish society has a duty to support that person [the whistleblower]…and see to it that the situation is changed.”

A. When you have such enormous surveillance with all of internet…some slips through…NSA is indifferent…Not because Denmark is an enemy, rather that NSA is part of the American state, which seeks to maximize its power and influence in all corners of the world.

Q: The Danish government considers partnership with NSA vital. Justice Minister Nick Hækkerup recently spoke of a paradox, “the secret that lays in the intelligence service, is part of the foundation so that we can preserve our freedom.”

A: That is silly, really silly…The idea that Denmark finds itself in a threatened situation, such that, in desperation, you reduce yourself to some kind of colony in USA’s foreign policy department is hopeless…And when you gather communication on everybody outside Denmark, treating them as second-class citizens, you create enemies.

Snowden told the reporter that he has seen the most secret documents about Danish-American cooperation. Each prime minister and president signs an agreement (which permits massive surveillance), which is shown to and signed by each successor. “A form of written handshake…There is no public debate allowed, nothing must be known. How can that be considered democratic?”

“Just because an official comes out and says that something is secret and cannot by law be disclosed doesn’t make it so. If a government does something illegal but calls it ‘secret,’ and any who discloses this is a ‘traitor,’ so raises the question: Who is the real enemy? In that case, the enemy is the people. The media is an intelligence service for a free society.”

Snowden furthermore explained that the U.S.-Danish government heads’ agreement sets in motion the technological problem that effective filtering is “impossible.” He adds that spies think they “need as much data as possible.”

Q. Kjekdtoft ended the interview by asking Snowden what he thought about intelligence

chiefs’ threat to at least eight journalists, himself included, that they must testify in an eventual court case that could run the course of several years.

A. “This is really extortion. If the government mixes in press freedom there should be civil opposition…If the government is stupid enough to demand that journalists [serve as] witness in this case, so it is the government that is in the dock and not the journalists or their sources.”

That is basically what several national and international civil liberties and press freedom organizations conclude as well. Nevertheless, neither those that I have seen nor Politiken’s interviewer, is willing to point out that the precedent for this is the case against WikiLeaks/Julian Assange. (And, of course, the case against Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, which we won.)

The World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) is one of several such organizations, which has condemned Danish authorities for threatening journalists with imprisonment.

“The overly broad application of national security laws to criminalize the press, combined with attempts to stifle publication of public interest journalism designed to hold authorities to account, is of growing concern globally. It is a favored tactic of oppressive, authoritarian regimes and we sincerely hope this is not a direction that Denmark is choosing to go towards.”

“This is nothing short of intimidation by the authorities in an attempt to impose pre-publication censorship,” said WAN-IFRA CEO Vincent Peyrègne.

WAN-IFRA spokespeople refused to answer CAM’s question about why the association refuses to take a stand on Assange.

Mads Brandstrup, chief executive officer of Danske Medier, the Danish Media Association, said: “The intelligence services must subject themselves to public scrutiny just as any other part of government. I find this kind of approach deeply concerning and it should have no place in a democratic society.”

“Can the government guarantee that the Danish Defense Intelligence Service does not allow the U.S. secret service NSA to spy on Denmark’s neighboring countries?” wrote DR, September 26, 2021. 

This was one of the key questions for then-Defense Minister Bramsen and Justice Minister Haekkerup when they were consulting with the Folketing [Parliament] Defense Committee. They could not reply “for fear there are major risks if confidential information from the intelligence services comes out publicly” said Minister Bramsen. Apparently, the Defense Committee did not ask if the government would continue spying on its own citizens.

1. “Winner of Pulitzer Prize, 2015, and NYT bestseller involves a Parisian father and daughter fleeing invading Nazis with “invaluable secrets.” The novel is a study in how people against all odds try to find out what is right and good. Besides being framed for “treason”—perhaps a whistleblower for democracy—Findsen must also be an avid reader of Graham Greene, John le Carré and Kafka.”↑
2. Criminal Code §109 : Anyone who reveals or transmits secret notifications, sub-actions, consultations or decisions of the State in cases in which the security or rights of the State in relation to foreign States, or which relate to significant socio-economic interests abroad, is punishable by imprisonment up to 12 years. [Author’s translation] The only other time this statute was applied was in 1980 when a man named Jorg received six years’ imprisonment for smuggling Danish state secrets concerning atomic and oil energy for East Germany’s Stasi. His lover, Karen Vinter, who photographed secret documents, received 18 months’ imprisonment. ↑

covertactionmagazine.com

By  LOWKEY

Today, Watchdog host Lowkey is joined by investigative journalist Matt Kennard to discuss how the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has infiltrated foreign media in an attempt to export obedience to the United States government and promote Washington’s interests around the world.

In the late twentieth century, the CIA developed an infamous reputation, both inside and outside the United States, as scandal after scandal hit the agency. COINTELPRO quietly infiltrated and subverted all manner of domestic democratic movements, including the student movement, the civil rights campaign, the hippie movement and the Black Panthers. The Church Committee, chaired by Sen. Frank Church (D-ID), revealed to the public that the CIA had also infiltrated hundreds of the largest and most important domestic media outlets in order to shape public discussion. Meanwhile, abroad, the CIA had funded death squads in Central America and organized the overthrow of several foreign leaders.

The National Endowment for Democracy was the Reagan administration’s solution to the storm of negative publicity. Established in 1983 as a semi-private company, the NED’s job was to be the group to which the U.S. government outsourced its dirtiest work. This was done almost completely openly. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein proudly told The Washington Post.

The NED quickly went to work undermining the governments of Eastern Europe in the name of democracy and freedom of speech. Yet, as Kennard told Lowkey, once the Communist-era regimes fell, it actually expanded its scope to act as a worldwide force for projecting U.S. government interests everywhere.

In recent years, the NED has been funneling money to protest leaders in Hong Kong, carrying out dozens of operations against the government of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, attempting to overthrow the Cuban government, and has even organized rock concerts inside Venezuela in an effort to destabilize the country.

But Kennard’s latest research shows that the NED is also conducting influence operations in the United Kingdom. The agency is quietly funding British journalistic outlets and press organizations to the tune of $3.5 million. As Kennard told Lowkey today:

From our research, it is quite clear that democracy and freedom are not the priorities of the NED because we could not find even one grant given in any of the six U.S.-backed Gulf dictatorships (Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait). Not one pro-democracy group in those countries received an NED grant that we could find. So it is effectively about projecting American power rather than freedom and democracy.

A former reporter for The Financial Times, Kennard is now chief investigator at Declassified UK, an investigative journalism outlet concentrating on British foreign policy, military and state power. He is deeply concerned about his findings, and the presupposition that U.S. actions inside Britain are benevolent, telling Lowkey:

If even a tiny percentage of this came out about Russia it would be a massive scandal – that journalists and press freedom groups were being funded by Russia. But because it is the United States, it is assumed that this is OK. It is assumed that we [the U.K.] are a vassal of the U.S. and our discourse can be distorted by the U.S. and it is not a problem. And for me and anyone who cares about the principles of press freedom and journalism, that is not something we should accept.

Lowkey and Kennard also chatted about how British journalists and being fed stories by U.S. intelligence, the shady backgrounds of senior Conservative politicians like Rory Stewart and Boris Johnson, and the treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

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