Before we start, the Israelis appear to have killed four World Central Kitchen staffers in an air strike in Gaza around 6 PM EDT. Video and pics of the casualties are circulating online. Trust me, you do not need to watch them or loock at them. Expect more clarity in tomorrow’s news reporting.
Russia appears to have taken the night and day off from the mass bombardment of Ukrainian civilian targets and infrastructure Right now – 6;35 PM EDT – only Dnipropetrovsk and Russian occupied Kherson Oblast have air raid alerts up. While air raid alerts over any part of Ukraine are bad, let’s hope things stay quiet overnight and tomorrow.
I have now had a chance to read The Insider‘s deep dive reporting on the Havana Syndrome, which, apparently, was the focus of last night’s 60 Minutes. I’ve also read their in depth interview with now retired CIA Senior Operational Service officer Marc Polymeropoulos. I have a few thoughts. The first is that I am not qualified to determine if a directed energy weapon is even feasible. The second is that a whole lot of people who have been definitively saying it isn’t are also not qualified to do so. What I do know, however, is a whole lot about Russia’s premier wetwork unit: the GRU’s Unit 29155. While the evidence presented in the reporting about Unit 29155’s involvement is circumstantial, there is just too much of it to discount as coincidental; leaving aside that at this level of national security there are no coincidences. The open-source evidence of the Havana Syndrome being a Russian wetwork operation in The Insider‘s reporting, as well as other open-source reporting I’ve seen on the topic, is similar to the type of evidence presented in Buzzfeed’s detailed seven part series on Russia’s assassination program.
The Insider‘s reporting places the first attacks in 2014, which is several years earlier than has previously been reported. Moreover, they place them in Europe. This fits with what we know about the timeline of Putin’s largely non-kinetic world war primarily using the elements of national power other than military power against the US, the EU, and NATO. Moreover, as is the case with so much of that war, it is designed to wrong foot the US. As I’ve written here several times over the years, the US’s counterintelligence capability has two distinctive features. The first is that its conclusions are never intended to see the light of day. So even if it has been determined that Russia has spent the past decade targeting US intelligence and military personnel, as well as at what the reporting seems to indicate was at least one political appointee, those findings would never see the light of day unless leaked. The second is that our counterintelligence capabilities are a shadow of their former self. This is a result of year on year, decade on decade lack of resources and, quite frankly, lack of emphasis on this important capability. Given these two unfortunate realities, this type of wetwork is the perfect type of Russian op, just as the poisoning and beating operation that Buzzfeed documented extensively was/is.
It is also the perfect type of operation to ramp up and expand during the Trump administration as none of his political appointees would do anything about it. Either because they were in agreement with Trump’s views on Putin and Russia or because they were scared to get crosswise with Trump and his enforcers in the White House personnel office and wind up losing their phony baloney jobs. As a result, the senior civil servants wouldn’t either. They saw what happened to senior career DOJ and FBI personnel who got crosswise with Trump over Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller investigation and learned the intended lesson. This is reflected in Marc Polymeropoulos’s recounting of how the senior appointed and career leadership at the CIA treated him and his colleagues that were suffering from Havana Syndrome. While it is true that the US nat-sec bureaucracy has a long, sad, and unfortunate history of either actively covering up or just ignoring the effects of war, warfare, and American uniformed and civilian personnels’ exposure to all sorts of noxious substances and the resulting negative health effects*, what The Insider reporting and Polymeropoulos’s interview indicate is that this both included this almost reflexive response and, at the same time, went far beyond it.
As I indicated in my first paragraph, I cannot speak to the weaponry, but I can speak to what we know of the tradecraft. And everything I know about that Russian tradecraft tells me that this is a Russian wetwork operation and Unit 29155 is up to their eyeballs in it. I’d be very interested to see whether there’s also a pattern of attacks on French personnel, especially in Africa, given that the GRU’s private military contractor (PMC) front group – Wagner PMC – spent years working to undermine French interests in the Sahel that led to the wave of coups in the central and western Sahel last summer and fall, which forced France out of the region and realigned those Sahel states with Russia.
I think that’s enough of that.
Here’s President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
War for Ukraine Day 768: A Brief(ish) Monday Night UpdatePost + Comments (43)
Your thoughts?
Totally open thread.