(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Could the WaPo Pentagon leak documents be a CIA disinformation campaign? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-12 I’m feeling a bit tin foil hat-ey this morning. Namely, I can’t stop thinking about the fact that the trove of leaked Pentagon documents that Washington Post (WaPo) discovered on Discord have been seen by them and an unnamed source—and that’s it. Does anyone else find this a little strange? Please let me know in the comments if I have my facts wrong. So to my understanding, there are TWO sets of documents that have thus far been reported on in the Pentagon Leak. The first set reported on by the NYT Was first leaked to Discord in early March, then leaked to Twitter, and subsequently onto Telegram (with alterations) At least some users who saw this information have been identified by other sources, like Bellingcat Included information that was REALLY not great for US foreign policy and intelligence Spying on South Korea’s government and details of negotiations with the US on artillery shell sales for Ukraine’s benefit Israel’s security service had a shadow resistance to the PM’s judicial overhaul plan. Showed details of US spy satellite imaging technology not previously known had details of the weakness of the Russian army Number of casualties Number of tanks left Included information on Ukraine’s plans to drone strike Rostov, forcing Ukraine to change its attack plans So the stuff about the Russian army felt pretty credible to me, because you’d think if the CIA planted disinformation, they wouldn’t choose to plant disinformation that was so publicly explosive in places like South Korea or Israel—or to reveal US spy satellite capabilities that were not previously known. So my brain categorized the “Pentagon Leak” papers in the “credible” bucket. Next came reporting from WaPo that stated that they had information on additional documents that were not previously reported on that were leaked from the Pentagon. Second set of documents reported on by WaPo Leaked onto Discord around the same time as the first set of documents Was not leaked elsewhere No users identified by name in WaPo article, nor have people who have seen the documents talked to other sources. Included information on Ukraine’s current state Air defenses running out of ammo as of late Feb Troops are not ready due to poor training Ukraine struggling to find troops Egypt is said to have been considering sending rockets and ammo to Russia, which Egypt strongly denied. So initially, because my brain had categorized the Pentagon Leak Papers as “likely credible,” I automatically assumed that the second set of documents reported on by WaPo were likely to be credible. While thinking about these documents in the shower (because I’m a weirdo who thinks about things like this in the shower), it struck me that these are effectively two separate leaks whose credibility should be judged independently, The NYT documents have a lot going for them to indicate that they are NOT a CIA disinformation campaign. All the foreign policy implications are damaging and sensitive, and the Spy Satellite information is at least marginally damaging. The WaPo documents’ credibility are a lot less clear. The US doesn’t have a cozy relationship with Egypt, and the information planted may have been a signal to Egypt not to send ammunition or weapons to Russia. And then we get to the information about the War in both articles. The CIA doesn’t really have that strong a motivation to plant information on Russia’s combat state, let alone to leak plans about a pending Ukraine drone strike that they will obviously cancel. I mean, it might demoralize Russia or strengthen support for Ukraine marginally, but the information was predictably suppressed and falsified in Russia. The rest of the world pretty much shrugged. What about the information about Ukraine’s air defenses and combat readiness? Kos went through all the reasons why things have changed greatly since late February that indicates Ukraine’s air defense, while taxed, are likely to be fine. But if it WERE disinformation, this kind of disinformation may bait Russia into sending its air forces into the teeth of the ready and prepared Ukrainian air defenses. What about the readiness of Ukrainian troops in training and the force generation issues? Ukraine recently revised its laws on draft notices—it previously had to be delivered at the person’s home allowing people to avoid being drafted by staying elsewhere. Now, the draft notices can be delivered anywhere, making it much harder to avoid the draft, so the idea that in February Ukraine was struggling to draft enough soldiers seems believable. So yeah, maybe there’s truth to this. On the other hand, my FIRST thought when I heard this information? “Ukraine’s going to strike Luhansk(North) instead of Zaporizhzhia (South).” Most people agree that there are two most likely places to have Ukraine’s counteroffensive is in the South toward Melitopol (Zaporizhzhia Oblast) or in the North towards Svatove/Starobilsk (Luhansk Oblast). A majority of analysts believed that the Southern offensive was more likely, because the terrain is extremely well suited to take advantage of Western Tanks’ strengths—wide open plains and farmland with no hills, forests. Russia apparently agrees, as they have spend the last 5-6 months furiously building up their defenses in the South and all but ignoring the North. Where as an attack in the South would require the Ukraine to launch multiple breach operations on fortifications to break through the initial line of defense (and to contend with multiple secondary and tertiary prepared defensive lines), Russia essentially has a single line of defenses between Ukraine and the key logistical hub of Starobilsk. Break through that one line of defenses and the tank brigades could run free. If the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are not ready to conduct large scale and repeated breach operations, it makes 100% sense that they would try to catch the Russians by surprise and attack in the North. It has the potential for major territorial gains, while exposing unready Ukrainian forces to the fewest possible instances of combat against Russian fortifications. The benefit gained would be less than the capture of Melitopl, which would open a road to recovering the rest of Kherson province (to the west of the offensive) and a route to launch an offensive on Crimea. But it would be several orders of magnitude easier operation than going into the teeth of the Russian defenses in a push to Melitopol. In that case, it would make a lot of sense for Ukraine to wait until 2024 to launch an operation to breach the Russian main defense line—they would get a practice run at a lower level of difficulty in attacking Svatove and Starobilsk in the North, and all of winter 2023~24 to prepare for the South offensive in Summer 2024. But… what if the WaPo documents are a CIA plant? I know journalists and I tend to have a high opinion of journalistic ethics, especially at traditional institutions like the NYT, WaPo or the WSJ. While I may not agree with what they have to say, or how they go about doing certain things, I don’t think they would publish an outright lie even if they were requested to do so by President Biden personally. I really dont. On the other hand, could I see the CIA hacking or pressing Discord to backdate documents to be put into a past chat log or non-existent server, and then tipping off WaPo to find documents? WaPo wouldn’t know the documents are fake—only a small number of people with server access at Discord and the CIA would know that. In that circumstance, I think WaPo would very much publish the find—why wouldn’t they? The information in these documents would be highly misleading to Russian intelligence. if my first thought from reading this information was “Ukraine is going for the North,” I’m sure the same thought occurred to Russian intelligence officers. If Ukraine’s plans were actually to drive south towards Melitopol, signaling to Russia that an offensive to Luhansk (Svatove/Starobilsk) would be exactly what you would want to do. And nothing that’s come out of the second set of documents that WaPo has discovered has yet produced anything (that I’ve heard of) that is damaging to US interests in the way the first set from the NYT documents had been. Maybe I’m jumping at shadows here, but this seems like a possible “lemonade from lemons” disinformation campaign by the CIA—because the first set of damaging leaked documents establishes the leak’s credibility, I’m sure Russian intelligence would be more likely to believe in the veracity of the second set of documents. If you WERE to do a disinformation campaign right now, this seems like exactly the way you would do it. Please let me know in the comments if I’ve gotten any of my facts wrong, or subsequent developments are killing my theory. I’ll gladly remove my tin foil hat. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/12/2163486/-Could-the-WaPo-Pentagon-leak-documents-be-a-CIA-disinformation-campaign Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/