One Particular Pentagon Doc Exposes The Unprofessionalism Of The US’ Intel Community

Casual observers of foreign affairs might be under the naïve impression that whatever government officials tell one another in secret supposedly has some degree of truth to it, ergo why they’re inclined to extend credence to the claims made in whatever leak it might be, whether this one or others. In reality, they lack the proper understanding of how the US’ Intelligence Community operates, which results in them being misled and falling under false impressions.

Vice News reported on one of the recently leaked Pentagon documents in their article titled “Leaked Pentagon Docs Share Wild Rumor: Kremlin Plans to ‘Throw’ Putin’s War While He’s Getting Chemo”. Someone in the US’ Intelligence Community (IC) spied on a high-profile target in Kiev who claimed to have heard from a Kremlin source that two top Russian military officials planned to sabotage the special operation around 5 March while President Putin allegedly underwent chemotherapy.

Instead of reasonably questioning that outlandishly conspiratorial claim, they felt it fitting to pass it along to the Pentagon, which explains why it ended up in one of the leaked documents. This was extremely unprofessional because the allegation should have been closely scrutinized first in order to ascertain its veracity so as not to inadvertently mislead major US military figures. The very fact that it wasn’t shows that there are serious problems in terms of how the US’ IC operates.

For example, it could have been the case that Russia used a double agent to plant this ridiculous rumor for the purpose of deceiving its opponents into getting their guard down around that time. Another explanation is that the supposed source really does work for Ukrainian intelligence but just told his handlers whatever he thought they wanted to hear so that they’d keep getting paid. A third possibility is that the Ukrainian official knew he was being spied on by the US and invented the story to mislead it.

In any case, the scenario that they speculated about didn’t unfold since those two top Russian military officials didn’t sabotage the special operation around 5 March like the report claimed would happen. Nevertheless, major US military figures were still exposed to this ultimately false information, which could have influenced their relevant calculations in this conflict. This only happened because the US’ IC is so unprofessional that they didn’t try to confirm the information first before passing it along to them.

Casual observers of foreign affairs might be under the naïve impression that whatever government officials tell one another in secret supposedly has some degree of truth to it, ergo why they’re inclined to extend credence to the claims made in whatever leak it might be, whether this one or others. In reality, they lack the proper understanding of how the US’ IC operates, which results in them also being misled and falling under false impressions such as the one pushed in that particular document analyzed above.

Russia or Ukraine attempted to manipulate the predicted end US recipient of this false information as was previously explained. If the alleged source was a double agent, then Moscow planted this story to mislead Kiev and Washington into getting their guard down at that time, but it could also have just been Kiev manipulating its patron to make its major military officials think that the Kremlin is in chaos. Either way, the end result is that this false information was pushed up the stovepipes to Pentagon leaders.

It can therefore be regarded as an immensely successful disinformation operation at least with respect to exposing its intended target to this conspiracy theory, though it remains unclear whether they acted on it in any way. Even so, it could have indirectly influenced them by contributing to other details that major US military officials considered when making various decisions related to how they’re waging this proxy war.

The takeaway is that casual observers should reflect on the lesson contained within this piece in order to better understand the way that the US’ IC operates, which is surprisingly unprofessional as revealed by this particular document contained in the latest leaks. Wishful thinking was obviously at play, which is why someone felt it fitting to pass along this ultimately false information to Pentagon leaders. This should never have happened and shows that there are serious problems in terms of competence.