Quotes of the Day:
“London calling with Frenchmen speaking to their countrymen… London calling with messages for our friends…”
“Molasses tomorrow will bring forth cognac.”
“Long sobs of autumn violins”
“Wound my heart with a monotonous languor”
“John has a long mustache.”
“Dun Dun Dun Dunnnn.”
-BBC, June 5, 1945
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 4 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. Special Operations and Diplomacy: A Unique Nexus
3. Taliban Faces Threat From Islamic State, New Resistance
4. First female B-52 squadron commander talks legacy in new role
5. American spy agencies review their misses on Ukraine, Russia
6. Wars don’t end for abandoned American allies
7. Gina Haspel Observed Waterboarding at C.I.A. Black Site, Psychologist Testifies
8. Russia hits Kyiv with missiles; Putin warns West on supplies
9. Al-Qaida enjoying a haven in Afghanistan under Taliban, UN warns
10. Opinion | We Can’t Be Ukraine Hawks Forever
11. ‘Napalm Girl’ and the enduring power of media myths
12. Wheels coming off Tesla’s China drive
13. The Great Collusion: How Big Defense Took Over The White House – OpEd
14. U.S. Warship Arrives in Stockholm for Military Exercises, and as a Warning
15. Ukraine’s volunteer ‘Kraken’ unit takes the fight to the Russians
16. THE WATCH THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD
17. Exercise Baltic Operations kicks off in the Baltic Sea
18. At Raleigh event, Fort Bragg official outlines renewable energy efforts
19. China’s spies are not always as good as advertised
20. Op-Ed: Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to films like 'Top Gun'?
21. The dirty little secret on how congressional staff thrive in the always-on world of modern politics is doing moonlight work like 80-hour weeks, including unpaid Saturdays and Sundays
22. ‘The Wire’ Stands Alone
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 4 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 4
Kateryna Stepanenko, Mason Clark, and George Barros
June 4, 6:00 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Ukrainian forces are successfully slowing down Russian operations to encircle Ukrainian positions in Luhansk Oblast as well as Russian frontal assaults in Severodonetsk through prudent and effective local counterattacks in Severodonetsk and their defense of the western Siverskyi Donets riverbank. Ukrainian officials reported on June 3 that Ukrainian defenders pushed back against Russian advances in Severodonetsk and are actively hindering Russian advances on Lysychansk from the southwest.[1] Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai disagreed with the UK Defense Ministry forecast on June 3 that Russian forces will seize the remaining 10% of the oblast in the next two weeks, claiming that Ukrainian forces have enough reinforcements and equipment to conduct further counterattacks and defend their positions.[2] Haidai noted that Russian forces wrongfully believe in their own successes, enabling Ukrainian defenders to inflict high losses against unsuspecting Chechen units. Pro-Russian milblogger Voenkor Kotyenok Z claimed that Russian forces are unlikely to break through Ukrainian defenses in Lysychansk from Severodonetsk (through continued frontal assaults and an opposed crossing of the Siverskyi Donetsk River) and will likely need to complete the drive from Popasna if they hope to capture Lysychansk.[3] Voenkor Kotyenok Z claimed that Ukrainian forces could prevent Russian river crossings from Severodonetsk and highlighted that Russian forces have not yet secured access to two key highways to Lysychansk.
The Ukrainian government and military are furthermore discussing the battle of Severodonetsk in increasingly confident terms and are likely successfully blunting the Russian military’s major commitment of reserves to the grinding battle for the city. While Russian forces may still be able to capture Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and Ukrainian forces are likely more degraded than Haidai’s statements imply, Ukrainian defenses remain strong in this pivotal theater. The Russian military has concentrated all of its available resources on this single battle to make only modest gains. The Ukrainian military contrarily retains the flexibility and confidence to not only conduct localized counterattacks elsewhere in Ukraine (such as north of Kherson) but conduct effective counterattacks into the teeth of Russian assaults in Severodonetsk that reportedly retook 20% of the city in the last 24 hours. The Ukrainian government’s confidence in directly stating its forces can hold Severodonetsk for more than two weeks and willingness to conduct local counterattacks, rather than strictly remaining on the defensive, is a marked shift from Ukrainian statements as recently as May 28 that Ukrainian forces might withdraw from Severodonetsk to avoid encirclement.[4]
Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reiterated on June 3 that Russia will continue its “special military operation” in Ukraine until Russia achieves all of its objectives.[5] Peskov noted that Russia has already “liberated” many settlements since the start of the operation. Kremlin officials have begun steadily returning to their original claims about the successes of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in contrast to previous statements in late May explaining the slow pace of the war.[6] Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu also claimed on June 3 that Russian forces are adopting new unspecified tasks to accelerate the progress of the war.[7] The Kremlin is likely setting conditions to announce some sort of victory in eastern Ukraine while preparing for a protracted war. The Kremlin has not abandoned its maximalist political goals for Ukraine even though it has been forced to revise downward its immediate military objectives.
Key Takeaways
- Ukrainian forces conducted successful local counterattacks in Severodonetsk and Russian progress in direct assaults on the city and wider operations to encircle it remain slow. Ukrainian defenses in eastern Ukraine remain effective.
- Russian forces launched a series of unsuccessful offensive operations southwest of Izyum and in the Lyman area.
- Russian forces continued to defend previously occupied positions around Kharkiv City and launched missile and artillery strikes against Ukrainian defenders.
- Russian forces did not attempt to launch assaults on settlements in Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblast but continued to fire at Ukrainian positions throughout southern Ukraine.
- The Kremlin faces rising partisan activity in southern Ukraine despite Russian efforts to restrict movement and telecommunications access.
- Ukrainian officials are continuing negotiations for a prisoner exchange of the captured Mariupol defenders.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time. We have stopped coverage of Mariupol as a separate effort since the city’s fall. We had added a new section on activities in Russian-occupied areas:
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
- Subordinate main effort- Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv City;
- Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
- Activities in Russian-occupied areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces carried out limited assault operations southeast of Izyum and near Barvinokove (southwest of Izyum) but did not make any territorial gains on June 4. Kharkiv Oblast Administration Head Oleg Synegubov reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to seize Virnopillya, approximately 20km southwest of Izyum.[8] Russian forces continued to launch unsuccessful assaults on Bohorodychne in a likely attempt to link up with units attempting to seize Sviatohirsk from the east—two settlements approximately 25km southeast of Izyum.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to shell Sviatohirsk and its surroundings.[10] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian artillery fire started a fire that destroyed the Sviatohirsk Lavra (monastery) of the Moscow Patriarchate, but ISW cannot independently verify this claim.[11] The Russian Defense Ministry blamed the fire on Ukrainian forces and claimed that Russian forces did not launch assaults on Sviatohirsk.[12] Russian Telegram channels claimed that Russian forces seized Sosnove just north of Sviatohirsk and Brusivka, approximately 9km southwest of Lyman.[13] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are still attempting to secure the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River in Staryi Karavan, approximately 1km northeast of Brusivka.[14]
Ukrainian and Russian sources confirmed that Ukrainian forces conducted a successful counterattack in Severodonetsk on June 3. Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai reported that Ukrainian forces recaptured 20% of Severodonetsk from Russian forces and inflicted significant casualties against Chechen units.[15] Some Russian milbloggers reported that Chechen units likely thought that they had successfully secured Severodonetsk and were unprepared for the counterattack.[16] The Russian Defense Ministry did not comment on the counterattack and falsely claimed that Ukrainian units are retreating to Lysychansk due to high losses of up to 90% of personnel.[17] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued street fights in Severodonetsk and reinforced their units with reserves mobilized from the Luhansk People’s Republic’s (LNR) 2nd Army Corps on June 4.[18] Haidai reported that Russian forces continued to target the remaining bridges in Severodonetsk to cut off Ukrainian logistics routes to Severodonetsk.[19] Russian forces also reportedly launched an unsuccessful offensive operation on Ustynivka, approximately 16km southeast of Severodonetsk, likely in an effort to secure positions on the western Siverskyi Donets Riverbank.[20]
Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian offensive operations around Popasna and defended Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) between Bakhmut and Lysychansk.[21] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched missile and air strikes on settlements in Bakhmut’s vicinity.[22] Russian forces also reportedly performed demonstrative actions to distract Ukrainian defenders in the Avdiivka area but did not launch assaults in western Donetsk Oblast.[23] The UK Defense Ministry reported that Russian forces have improved their combined use of air and artillery strikes in Donbas compared to the first two months of the war.[24] Russian milblogger and Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) serviceman Maksim Fomin (Vladelen TatarZkiy) claimed that Russian infantry is still unable to successfully maneuver because Russian forces have not fully suppressed Ukrainian artillery.[25] Fomin added that Russian forces struggle to locate Ukrainian artillery due to a lack of necessary equipment (such as radar and drones) and poor communication between Russian artillery and reconnaissance units.
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations in the Kharkiv City direction and continued to defend their previously occupied positions on June 4. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to shell Ukrainian positions northeast of Kharkiv City and launched a missile strike on a transportation infrastructure facility near Mokhnach, approximately 36km southeast of the city.[26] Pro-Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed that Ukrainian engineering elements reached Khotomlya, approximately 46km east of Kharkiv City and on the eastern bank of Pechenihy Reservoir, and are operating in the area, but have not regained full control over the territory.[27] Ukrainian officials and media sources have not shown any evidence that Ukrainian defenders crossed the Pechenihy Reservoir, but such an advance would threaten Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in northern Kharkiv Oblast. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to deliver ammunition to frontline units and withdrew up to 100 unspecified items of damaged military equipment via GLOCs in northern Kharkiv Oblast on June 4.[28]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued to undertake defensive measures and conducted missile, air, and artillery strikes throughout southern Ukraine on June 4. The Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration reported that small-scale fighting continued on the line of contact but that Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations.[29] Russian forces continued to generate forces in Vasylkivka, approximately 45km south of Zaporizhia City.[30] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces fired at Ukrainian positions in central Zaporizhia Oblast and launched an airstrike on a Kamianske just north of Vasylkivka.[31] Russian forces launched missile strikes on Odesa and Mykolaiv Oblasts and continued to shell Mykolaiv City and Kherson Oblast.[32]
Activity in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)
Russian President Vladimir Putin falsely denied that Russia is blocking Ukrainian seaports and inhibiting grain exports on June 3, despite Russian forces reportedly continuing to loot Ukrainian agribusiness.[33] Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasyl Bodnar reported that Russian forces are exporting stolen grain from Kherson Oblast to Turkey and other unspecified countries.[34]
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) reported that Ukrainian authorities are working with an unspecified international coalition to negotiate a prisoner exchange of the Mariupol defenders.[35] The SBU noted that the unspecified international coalition guaranteed the return of the Mariupol defenders, possibly implying that Russian and Ukrainian forces reached a conditional agreement upon the Ukrainian surrender of the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol. The SBU added that the Red Cross bears the responsibility for all surrendered Mariupol defenders. The SBU noted that the Kremlin seeks to put Mariupol defenders on a demonstrative trial but did not specify how Russian sentencing could impact the prisoner exchange. Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian and Russian forces evenly exchanged bodies of deceased servicemen on June 4.[36]
Russian occupation authorities are unable to entirely suppress Ukrainian partisan activity, despite ongoing efforts to restrict movement and telecommunications in occupied territories. Mariupol Mayor’s Advisor Petro Andryushenko claimed that Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) officials agreed to strengthen filtration processes and restrict civilian movement between districts in Mariupol due to growing dissatisfaction among remaining residents and persistent information leaks to the Ukrainian authorities.[37] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast enhanced their security and began wearing bulletproof vests and driving in armored vehicles due to Ukrainian resistance.[38] Some Ukrainian partisans have reportedly started offering payments in cryptocurrency for the destruction of Russian military equipment.[39]
[33] https://smotrim dot ru/video/2420860?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=main-promo
[34] https://suspilne dot media/246460-posol-ukraini-zaklikav-tureccinu-poasniti-comu-v-krainu-vivoza
2. Special Operations and Diplomacy: A Unique Nexus
A view from a Foreign Service Officer and former USSOCOM POLAD.
I could not find a date on this but I am told this was written in 2017. I must have missed it back then.
Special Operations and Diplomacy: A Unique Nexus
There has been a growing convergence of interest between diplomacy and special operations since the 9/11 terror attacks.
BY STEVEN KASHKETT
Marines from a Special Operations Company of the 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion meet with local leaders in the town of Qal’eh-ye Gaz in Afghanistan’s Helmand province to assist with medical needs and discuss their issues with anti-coalition forces operating in the area in August 2007.
U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Ryan Davis
Afghan National Army soldiers watch as a Special Forces soldier kicks in the door to a home before clearing the house during a village search in Zabul province in September 2004. Afghan National Army soldiers assisted the Special Forces soldiers in the search for Taliban fighters in the remote village.
Steve Hebert
For most of us in the Foreign Service, one of the most striking developments in the 16 years since the 9/11 terror attacks has been a dramatic increase in synergy between the Department of State and the U.S. military. Coordination of our military and diplomatic activities overseas has become a guiding principle.
The shared role of the military and State Department civilians in managing the prolonged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the broadening of U.S. military operations across a variety of foreign areas, and the growing ascendancy of the military in foreign policy decision-making have all contributed to the realization that State and Defense must work together more effectively. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of special operations.
Embedded State foreign policy advisers (POLADs) are now assigned throughout the special operations community within the U.S. military. This diplomatic presence extends not just to the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) based at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida, which oversees all special operations forces (SOF) worldwide, but also to the headquarters of each of the functional component special operations commands for the four branches of the military and to the theater special operations commands in each region of the world. At the same time, SOCOM has assigned its own dedicated SOF liaison officers to the State Department and more than two dozen U.S. embassies.
The convergence of interest between diplomacy and special operations can best be explained by understanding the unique— and often publicly misconstrued—activities that SOF elements undertake abroad.
U.S. Special Operations: Myth and Reality
Hollywood movies paint a picture of special operations as nothing but direct action: killing terrorists in nighttime raids, rescuing hostages, conducting drone strikes, blowing up facilities behind enemy lines and undertaking similar commando operations. To be sure, our SOF operators do conduct these kinds of kinetic, “tip-of the-spear” direct actions, which remain at the heart of the SOF mission and have taken the spotlight since 9/11. But there is much more to U.S. special operations.
Particularly over the past two decades, the U.S. special operations community has expanded its focus on cultivating relationships by using training and “soft” power initiatives to build partnerships between SOF forces and key local constituencies in other countries. Admiral William H. McRaven, the visionary SOCOM commander from 2011 to 2014, placed the highest emphasis on developing what has come to be called the “Global SOF Network” to link together the capabilities, expertise and collaborative efforts of the special operations forces of dozens of like-minded nations. An essential feature of this strategy is building trust through a wide range of “indirect” activities.
Today, U.S. special operators are engaged in this indirect approach on a daily basis in more than 100 countries. (The exact number of countries with an SOF presence is classified, but some reports assert that it is considerably greater than 100; 138 is the number cited in a Jan. 5 article in The Nation, “American Special Operations Forces Are Deployed to 70 Percent of the World’s Countries.”) Training SOF partners to build their capacity and fostering long-term relationships with them remains a central feature of the indirect approach. U.S. special operations expertise is unparalleled and highly sought after by foreign militaries, police forces and internal security organizations. Our elite special operators possess skills, tactics, specially designed equipment, and intelligence gathering know-how that can transform a foreign government’s own capabilities.
SOF training missions take place on a frequent basis, with the aim of creating friendly foreign partner SOF forces that can acquire the capacity to deal with regional threats themselves, without directly involving U.S. forces. Although much of this “sustained engagement” remains outside the public spotlight, there is no doubt that in places like Colombia, the Philippines, the Sahel countries of Central Africa and certain Middle Eastern states, training and assistance from U.S. personnel has made a decisive difference in the fight against extremist networks.
Like the ethos of career diplomats, the SOF philosophy recognizes the value of nurturing ties to foreign cultures.
Like the ethos of career diplomats, the SOF philosophy recognizes the value of nurturing ties to foreign cultures, and acknowledges the stability value of addressing the critical needs of civilians. As a result, U.S. special operations units around the world carry out a much broader civil affairs mission, which can include providing medical and public health services in underserved areas, assisting with agricultural and economic development at the village level, delivering disaster relief and furnishing humanitarian aid. Substantial assistance efforts by U.S. special operations were particularly noteworthy in Haiti and Nepal following major earthquakes in 2010 and 2015, respectively, and even in Japan after the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
SOF teams deployed to various countries include doctors, veterinarians, engineers and logistics experts. There are numerous recent examples. In 2016, a team of SOF veterinarians conducted a seminar for local herders in Niger during which some 674 cattle, 464 goats, 52 camels and five donkeys received preventive treatment. In Georgia last year, SOF medical personnel conducted an assessment of health facilities to determine services available to refugees. In other countries, SOF teams carried out vaccinations and helped with rural development projects. Diplomatic Courier describes it this way in a 2013 article: “It is useful to think of SOF as the hard edge to soft power; their skills are the yin to the yang, and their activities regularly demonstrate that troops cannot be there solely to train and teach, or only to pursue kinetic solutions.”
Acquiring a sufficiently comprehensive picture of the “operating environment” on the ground to be able to anticipate changes that might favor extremism, as well as to enhance stability, win the hearts and minds of local leaders and local communities, and thereby reduce the conditions in which terrorist networks can thrive, are equally vital goals of the SOF’s soft-power activities. National security expert Linda Robinson explains it this way in the Nov.-Dec. 2012 Foreign Affairs: “The long-term relationships fostered by the indirect approach are conduits for understanding and influence. They are the basis for partnerships through which the United States can help other countries solve their own problems and contribute to increased security in their regions. In some cases, the partnerships grow into alliances, as other countries become willing to assist the United States in security missions elsewhere.”
Testifying before a congressional committee in 2013, Admiral McRaven stated: “The direct approach alone is not the solution to the challenges our nation faces today, as it ultimately only buys time and space for the indirect approach. … In the end, it will be such continuous indirect operations that will prove decisive in the global security arena.”
Embassies and SOF: Bound Together
U.S. Army soldiers from the 3rd Special Forces Group help inspect Malian army soldiers’ weapons at their garrison in Tombouctou, Mali, in September 2007, during an exercise to foster relationships of peace, security and cooperation among the trans-Sahara nations. The exercise was part of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, an integrated, multiagency effort of the U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Defense Department.
U.S. Air Force / Master Sgt. Ken Bergmann
This wide range of activity, usually implemented by small SOF units with a light footprint, has expanded the U.S. special operations presence throughout virtually every region of the world, in many cases into countries where we have no conventional military forces. In the age of “Chief-of-Mission Authority”—the golden rule that since the 1950s has required all U.S. government personnel and activities in a foreign country to be approved by the ambassador—SOF operations inevitably necessitate close coordination with U.S. embassies. With few exceptions, for both direct action and indirect activities, SOF commanders are required to get the ambassador’s concurrence, seek the embassy’s clearance for the entry of SOF personnel and then keep the country team briefed on the status of the mission. Enforcing this rule is becoming a major task for embassies.
Direct action missions overseas take place only in exceptional circumstances outside of established war zones, but the campaign to disrupt violent extremist networks in critical threat countries has made them useful in recent years in places like Yemen, Mali, Libya, Somalia and Syria. It has also become quite commonplace for American military personnel to provide advice, intelligence and logistical support for strikes conducted by host-country SOF elements. In such instances, coordination with the State Department and the local U.S. embassy is vital because of the potential for public fallout and impact on the bilateral relationship.
Numerous cases highlight the need for close diplomatic-military coordination on kinetic actions that will take place on foreign soil, as well as the potential for serious friction and adverse effects on U.S. foreign policy objectives. Operation Neptune Spear, the 2011 SOF raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed, accomplished its purpose but sparked a protracted crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations. An operation by a Navy SEAL team targeting the Islamic State group in Yemen late last year caused a backlash.
Public knowledge that the United States is involved with direct action missions by foreign partner special operations forces in an undeclared conflict zone—whether in the form of advice, intelligence sharing or actual combat support—can lead to negative repercussions within the country and the region. Many foreign partners prefer to keep their relationship with U.S. special operations out of public view for this reason, which helps explain why the details of so many of these partnerships remain classified. The State Department and its embassies have a strong incentive, therefore, to be kept fully in the loop and to retain the ultimate decision-making authority over these activities.
Even the choice of which foreign SOF partners to cultivate is subject to political sensitivities and foreign policy considerations. Throughout Latin America in recent decades, U.S. special operations engagement with partner forces in countries with poor human rights records deepened historical suspicion and distrust of the United States, sparking concern that those regimes were using what they learned from U.S. commando training against internal political opponents. In the minds of some critics, this cooperation with Latin American militaries made SOF synonymous with support for unsavory dictators.
By contrast with the conventional military, SOF often function in a dimension that shadows traditional diplomacy.
Today, U.S. special operators go to great lengths to avoid such perceptions, but close coordination of their activities with the State Department is critical to this effort. As Linda Robinson observes in Foreign Affairs, “Navigating the failings of partner governments, as well as civil strife and complex sectarian, ideological, or tribal conflicts, is extraordinarily difficult; and given the high risk of blowback, the United States must constantly assess whether special operations partnerships with non-U.S. forces are, on balance, advancing or compromising U.S. interests.” Despite attempts to enhance their political awareness through specialized training, SOF personnel can sometimes be tone-deaf to the foreign policy context in which they operate in so many different countries, and to the consequences for broader U.S. objectives. Career diplomats serving in those countries, who understand the local history and political culture—as well as POLADS themselves, who often have experience in the same regions or countries—are uniquely qualified to provide the necessary guidance.
Some indirect activities by special operations units overlap materially with what State and USAID programs are designed to accomplish in a country. Especially when working in the areas of economic development, public health and humanitarian assistance, SOF efforts inevitably stray into the space traditionally occupied by U.S. civilian foreign affairs agencies. For many, this kind of work is an essential part of diplomacy and therefore should stay under the control of civilian agencies. But the unfortunate reality is that while the special operations community has ample and growing resources, State and USAID have always labored within significant budget constraints and now face the threat of massive outright cuts.
Ambassadors must acknowledge that the best hope for preserving our ability to use “soft power” in many areas may well be to embrace the indirect activities of U.S. special operations forces. Both sides need to recognize the importance of coordinating and deconflicting their respective activities. Our special operations leadership is keenly aware that, as one recent State POLAD to SOCOM put it, they “could be whacking moles from now to eternity if we don’t address the root causes and fertile ground from which violent extremism emerges”—and that there can be little progress in this effort without State and USAID. This is why SOF leaders are among the most compelling advocates for State and USAID appropriations. Given that the SOF budget is likely to far outstrip civilian agencies’ funding under the current administration, however, there can be little doubt that developmental and humanitarian projects by special operations units will take on greater prominence as a tool of U.S. foreign policy.
The author in a helicopter with the SOCOM commander over the Honduran jungle in 2013.
Courtesy of Steve Kashkett
Special Operations: Wave of the Future?
A U.S. Special Forces soldier distributes toothbrushes to a group of children as part of a public health campaign.
U.S. Department of Defense
At a time when the most pressing danger to U.S. national security comes from international terrorism and asymmetric threats from extremist networks spread across multiple countries—and when so much of our diplomacy revolves around building coalitions to combat these threats—special operations will inevitably have an increasingly central role in U.S. foreign policy. SOF have the primary mission of countering terrorism and violent extremism, as well as preventing the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. And this places it front and center in so much of what our diplomats are doing these days. Furthermore, foreign governments place enormous value on the assistance that elite U.S. special operators can provide in countering these threats. The offer of U.S. SOF support has frequently become a “deliverable” in negotiations with allies and even adversaries; in some instances, it is the most valuable asset we can offer.
By contrast with the conventional military, SOF often function in a dimension that shadows traditional diplomacy and provides additional options for dealing with thorny problems. General Joseph Votel, who served as SOCOM commander from 2014 to 2016, set forth this thinking in a January 2016 essay in JFQ: Joint Force Quarterly, “Unconventional Warfare in the Gray Zone.”
Gen. Votel articulates the role of SOF this way: “While ‘Gray Zone’ refers to a space in the peace-conflict continuum, the methods for engaging our adversaries in that environment have much in common with the political warfare that was predominant during the Cold War years. Political warfare is played out in that space between diplomacy and open warfare, where traditional statecraft is inadequate or ineffective and large-scale conventional military options are not suitable or are deemed inappropriate for a variety of reasons. … SOF are optimized to provide the pre-eminent military contribution to a national political warfare capability because of their inherent proficiency in low-visibility, small-footprint and politically sensitive operations. SOF provide national decision-makers strategic options for protecting and advancing U.S. national interests without committing major combat forces to costly, long-term contingency operations.”
Adversaries increasingly operate in this “gray zone.” Examples include Russia’s aggressive dissemination of disinformation through social media and other means, China’s deployment of military vessels disguised as civilian fishing boats and Iran’s harassment activities in the Strait of Hormuz that fall short of overt military provocations. All of these countries try to hide their recruitment of proxy forces in conflicts around the world. Significantly, General Votel was invited as a special guest to address SOF efforts in the “gray zone” and SOF-embassy relations at last year’s State Department chief-of-mission conference. A fellow speaker, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, praised the effectiveness of special operations activities in countering Russian propaganda in that country.
Because of its speed, flexibility, and specialized skills and weapons—distinctive capabilities for addressing the “gray zone” and subnational threats that have been pre-eminent since the beginning of the 21st century—it can be argued that special operations represents the wave of the future. While the conventional, general purpose forces of the U.S. military still have a number of important missions in preserving the peace around the world, a full-blown conventional war against the conventional military of a foreign power seems unlikely. Special operations played a far greater role in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than in any previous war, and the SOF “tip of the spear” raids and other pinpoint strikes were the keys to many of the successes that took place.
Numerous cases highlight the need for close diplomatic military coordination on kinetic actions that will take place on foreign soil.
As Gen. Votel has observed: “In the autumn of 2001, a small SOF element and interagency team, supported by carrier- and land-based airstrikes, brought down the illegitimate Taliban government in Afghanistan that had been providing sanctuary for al-Qaida. This strikingly successful unconventional warfare operation was carried out with a U.S. ‘boots on the ground’ presence of roughly 350 SOF and 110 interagency operatives, working alongside an indigenous force of some 15,000 Afghan irregulars.”
Against this backdrop, it is logical for U.S. diplomats to see the special operations community as a highly adaptable, singularly capable natural ally—and as a primary partner in the civilian-military diplomacy of the future. There are undeniably many risks and potential pitfalls ahead. It will be a challenge for the State Department and its career officers to retain primacy over the formulation and implementation of foreign policy in an era when quasi-autonomous military SOF teams are present in more than 100 countries and possess far greater operating resources. The personnel numbers alone are daunting: there are some 70,000 U.S. special operators worldwide, compared to fewer than 10,000 Foreign Service officers.
Some fear that the expansion of well-funded U.S. special operations activities into nearly 70 percent of the countries of the world will somehow overwhelm traditional civilian diplomacy and render it obsolete. This concern overlooks the fact that SOF is ill-equipped to replace many of the key functions of embassies: maintaining a high-level dialogue with host governments on vital bilateral issues, reporting and analyzing political-economic developments, providing assistance to U.S. citizens abroad, and conducting the public outreach and educational and cultural exchanges that embody U.S. public diplomacy. Special operations teams will not usurp these roles.
But in a world where asymmetric, non-state extremist networks and unconventional “gray zone” warfare represent the greatest threat to international security, SOF will have a growing role to play as a foreign policy instrument alongside traditional diplomacy.
Steve Kashkett is a Senior Foreign Service officer who served as the senior POLAD to U.S. Special Operations Command from 2012 to 2013. He has also served as deputy chief of mission in Prague; principal officer in Tijuana and Halifax; political officer in Beirut, Paris, Haiti and Jerusalem; and in numerous assignments in Washington, D.C. He is a former AFSA State vice president.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
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3. Taliban Faces Threat From Islamic State, New Resistance
If I was advising the Afghan resistance in Panjshir to develop a long term strategy I might counsel them to bide their time, build their strength, focus on political mobilization and allow the Taliban and ISIS to duke it out until both are sufficiently weakened. Then execute the campaign plan.
Taliban Faces Threat From Islamic State, New Resistance
A new U.N. report says that with the onset of better weather, violence in Afghanistan could increase as anti-Taliban groups escalate operations.
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Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are maintaining close ties with al-Qaida as they consolidate control over the country, and their main military threat is coming from the Islamic State extremist group and guerrilla-style attacks by former Afghan government security personnel, U.N. experts said in a new report.
The experts said in the report to the U.N. Security Council that with the onset of better weather, fighting may escalate as both Islamic State and resistance forces undertake operations against Taliban forces.
But neither IS nor al-Qaida “is believed to be capable of mounting international attacks before 2023 at the earliest, regardless of their intent or of whether the Taliban acts to restrain them,” the panel of experts said.
Nonetheless, it said the presence of IS, al-Qaida, and “many other terrorist groups and fighters on Afghan soil” is raising concerns in neighboring countries and the wider international community.
Since their takeover of Afghanistan last August 15 as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final stages of their chaotic withdrawal from the country after 20 years, the Taliban “have favored loyalty and seniority over competence, and their decision-making has been opaque and inconsistent,” the experts said.
In the report obtained Thursday, the panel monitoring sanctions against the Taliban said its leaders have appointed 41 men on the U.N. sanctions blacklist to the Cabinet and senior positions, and they have favored the country’s dominant Pashtun ethnic group, alienating minority communities including ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks.
The Taliban’s primary concern has been to consolidate control “while seeking international recognition, to re-engage with the international financial system and to receive aid in order to deal with the growing economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan,” the experts said.
“Since taking power, however, there have been many factors creating internal tensions within the movement, leading to perceptions that the Taliban’s governance has been chaotic, disjointed and prone to reversing policies and going back on promises,” they said.
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As the Taliban struggle to transition from an insurgency to a governing body, they have been divided between pragmatists and hardliners who have gained the upper hand and want to turn the clock back to the group’s harsh rule from 1996 until December 2001, when they were ousted from power by U.S. forces following the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
To date, their efforts to win recognition and aid from Western nations have floundered, largely because they have not formed a more representative government, and have restricted the rights of girls to education beyond elementary school, and of women to work and travel without a male relative’s oversight.
“The central dilemma is how a movement with an inflexible ideology can engage with a society that has evolved during the past 20 years,” the experts said. “Further stresses revolve around power, resources, and regional and ethnic divisions.”
Despite these serious issues, the panel said the Taliban “appear confident in their ability to control the country and `wait out’ the international community to obtain eventual recognition of their government.”
“They assess that, even if they make no significant concessions, the international community will ultimately recognize them as the government of Afghanistan, especially in the absence of a government in exile or significant internal resistance,” the experts said.
So far, not a single country has officially recognized the Taliban, and there is growing international anger at its treatment of girls and women and its failure to keep its promise of forming an inclusive government. There are also concerns about the Taliban’s inability to keep its promise not to allow terrorist groups to operate in Afghanistan.
The panel said the Haqqani Network, a militant Islamist group with close ties to the Taliban, moved quickly after their takeover to gain control of key portfolios and ministries including interior, intelligence, passports and migration. It now “largely controls security in Afghanistan, including the security of the capital, Kabul,” the experts said.
“The Haqqani Network is still regarded as having the closest links to al-Qaida,” the panel said, and the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaida also remains close. The experts pointed to the reported presence of al-Qaida’s “core leadership” in eastern Afghanistan including its leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
To counter the Islamic State, the report quoted an unidentified country as saying the Taliban have created three battalions of special forces called “red units.”
The emergence of the National Resistance Front and Afghanistan Freedom Front comprising former Afghan security personnel “has led the Taliban to adopt aggressive measures against populations suspected of supporting anti-Taliban operations,” the panel said.
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In April, it said National Resistance Front forces stepped up operations in Badakhshan, Baghlan, Jowzjan, Kunduz, Panjshir, Takhar and Samangan provinces.
The Afghan Freedom Front, which only emerged recently, “has also claimed several attacks on Taliban bases in Badakhshan, Kandahar, Parwan and Samangan,” the experts said.
“Taliban forces may be hard pressed to counter several insurgencies simultaneously,” they said.
Edith M. Lederer
Edith M. Lederer reported for Associated Press from the United Nations.
4. First female B-52 squadron commander talks legacy in new role
First female B-52 squadron commander talks legacy in new role
“I don’t like to focus on the fact that I am the first female because I think that takes away from the people in my squadron. It is about them and my opportunity to serve them, “said Lt. Col. Wilcox. “That’s the legacy I want, is building those future generations to fill in and to eventually be the leaders the Air Force needs.”
Born in Ohio, Lt. Col. Wilcox has served in the military for 17 years, which she believes has prepared her for this opportunity. She’s also been stationed at the Barksdale Air Force Base since 2006.
“For me being in the Air Force, every job that I’ve had has been an opportunity that has helped me see the Air Force as a whole. Prior to this position, I was working as one of the deputies for the mission support groups on base. So, with that, I got to interact with all of the agencies on base who support and directly impact the ability to execute the B-52 mission every day.”
Lt. Col. Wilcox is a mother of two young daughters. While she is breaking glass ceilings, she credits her mother as she balances parenting and leading the 96th Bomb Squadron.
“It’s not a balance. It is 100 percent an all-hands-on-deck game. I have full support and help from my mom who happens to live in town. She was nice enough to move to Louisiana from Ohio. They are fully ingrained, and love being a military family.”
The 96th was founded in 1918 as the 96th Aero Squadron. Today, the men and women of the 96th known as the Red Devils maintain the heritage of “First to Bomb” and provide worldwide combat capability with the force of B-52 aircraft, aircrews, and supporting operation personnel.
5. American spy agencies review their misses on Ukraine, Russia
It is always important to conduct thorough and critical after action reviews.
Learn, adapt, and anticipate. We must continuously improve by conducting continual AARs.
American spy agencies review their misses on Ukraine, Russia
AP · by NOMAAN MERCHANT and MATTHEW LEE · June 4, 2022
Ultimately, U.S. intelligence agencies underestimated Zelenskyy and Ukraine while overestimating Russia and its president, even as they accurately predicted Vladimir Putin would order an invasion.
But Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, did not fall in a few days, as the the United States had expected. And while American spy agencies have been credited with supporting Ukraine’s resistance, they now face bipartisan pressure to review what they got wrong beforehand — especially after their mistakes in judging Afghanistan last year.
Intelligence officials have begun a review of how their agencies judge the will and ability of foreign governments to fight. The review is taking place while U.S. intelligence continues to have a critical role in Ukraine and as the White House ramps up weapons deliveries and support to Ukraine, trying to predict what Putin might see as escalatory and seeking to avoid a direct war with Russia.
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President Joe Biden’s administration announced it would give Ukraine a small number of high-tech, medium-range rocket systems, a weapon that Ukraine has long wanted. Since the war began on Feb. 24, the White House has approved shipping drones, anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems, and millions of rounds of ammunition. The U.S. has lifted early restrictions on intelligence-sharing to provide information that Ukraine has used to strike critical targets, including the flagship of the Russian navy.
Lawmakers from both parties question whether the U.S. could have done more before Putin invaded and whether the White House held back some support due to pessimistic assessments of Ukraine. Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, told officials at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last month that “had we had a better handle on the prediction, we could have done more to assist the Ukrainians earlier.”
Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that he thought the White House and top administration officials had projected “their own bias on the situation in a way that lends itself to inaction.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee sent a classified letter last month to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence asking about how intelligence agencies assessed both Ukraine and Afghanistan. CNN first reported the letter.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers in May that the National Intelligence Council would review how the agencies assess both “will to fight” and “capacity to fight.” Both issues are “quite challenging to provide effective analysis on and we’re looking at different methodologies for doing so,” Haines said.
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While there is no announced timetable on the review, which began before the committee’s letter, officials have identified some errors. Several people familiar with prewar assessments spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
Despite its vast advantages, Russia failed to establish air superiority over Ukraine and failed at basic tasks such as securing its battlefield communications. It has lost thousands of soldiers and at least eight to 10 generals, according to U.S. estimates. Russian and Ukrainian forces are now fighting in fierce, close quarters combat in eastern Ukraine, far from the swift Russian victory forecast by the U.S. and the West.
While Russia has entered recent proxy wars, it had not directly fought a major land war since the 1980s. That meant many of Russia’s projected and claimed capabilities had not been put to the test, posing a challenge for analysts to assess how Russia it would perform in a major invasion, some of the people said. Russia’s active weapons export industry led some people to believe Moscow would have many more missile systems and planes ready to deploy.
Russia has not used chemical or biological weapons, as the U.S. publicly warned it might. One official noted that the U.S. had “very strong concerns” about a chemical attack, but that Russia may have decided that would cause too much global opposition. Fears that Russia would use a wave of cyberattacks against Ukraine and allies have not materialized so far.
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Other Russian problems were well-known, including low troop morale, a prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse among troops, and the lack of a noncommissioned officer corps to oversee forces and deliver instructions from commanders.
“We knew all of those things existed,” said retired Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “But it just became a cascading effect of how overwhelming all of that became when they tried to do even the most simple of operations.”
Sue Gordon, the former principal deputy director of national intelligence, said analysts may have relied too much on counting Russia’s inventory of military and cyber tools.
“We’re going to learn a little bit about how we think about capability and use as not one and the same when you assess outcome,” she said at a recent event sponsored by The Cipher Brief, an intelligence publication.
Zelenskyy has received worldwide acclaim for refusing to flee as Russia sent teams to try to capture or kill him. Britain’s Churchill, throughout the yearlong blitz of London by German fighter aircraft during World War II, often watched the bombing raids from rooftops and he made special effort to walk the streets in places where thousands were killed.
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In contrast, Afghanistan’s Ghani slipped out of his country on Sunday last August, lonely and isolated, a few months after America’s top diplomat had urged him to forge a united stand as the American military pullout neared. Ghani did not even tell other political leaders who had been negotiating a peaceful transition of power with the Taliban that he was heading for the exit. His sudden and secret departure left Kabul, the capital, rudderless as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final stages of their chaotic withdrawal from the country after 20 years.
For Zelenskyy, before the war there were tensions, too, with Washington about the likelihood of a Russian invasion and whether Ukraine was prepared. One flashpoint, according to people familiar with the dispute, was that the U.S. wanted Ukraine to move forces from its west to bolster defenses around Kyiv.
Until shortly before the war, Zelenskyy and top Ukrainian officials discounted warnings of an invasion, in part to tamp down public panic and protect the economy. One U.S. official said there was a belief that Zelenskyy had never been tested in a crisis of the level his country was facing.
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Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, the current director of the DIA, testified in March that “my view was that, based on a variety of factors, that the Ukrainians were not as ready as I thought they should be. Therefore, I questioned their will to fight. That was a bad assessment on my part because they have fought bravely and honorably and are doing the right thing.”
In May, Berrier distanced his own view from that of the entire intelligence community, which he said never had an assessment “that said the Ukrainians lacked the will to fight.”
There was ample evidence of Ukraine’s determination before the war. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the eight-year conflict in the Donbas region had hardened public attitudes against Moscow. Ukrainian forces had received years of training and weapons shipments from the U.S. across several administrations along with help bolstering its cyber defenses.
U.S. intelligence had reviewed private polling suggested strong support in Ukraine for any resistance. In Kharkiv, a mostly Russian-speaking city near the border, citizens were learning to fire guns and training for guerrilla warfare.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, saw that determination firsthand during a December trip. Wenstrup, R-Ohio, witnessed a military ceremony where participants would read the names of every Ukrainian soldier who had died the previous day on the front lines in the Donbas, the region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian government forces since 2014.
“It showed to me that they had a will to fight,” he said. “This has been brewing for a long time.”
___
Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
AP · by NOMAAN MERCHANT and MATTHEW LEE · June 4, 2022
6. Wars don’t end for abandoned American allies
An example of civil society organizations trying to do the right thing and hold the government accountable.
Excerpts:
In its most recent filing with the court, the administration argues that circumstances in Afghanistan have changed. This is true, of course, but those changes largely stemmed from policy choices the U.S. made and have only made the need for a court-ordered remedy more urgent. For at-risk SIV applicants, circumstances have changed too: many are now just one house-to-house search by the Taliban away from torture and death.
The thrust of the administration’s argument is that it has done all it can for Afghans at this point and that it has other crises requiring its attention — a claim that is shocking and offensive given
the many ways the Administration has found to fail Afghans. Its position appears even more indefensible given the very modest requirement imposed by the court: a good faith effort by the State Department to speed up processing of these SIV applications and to report on its progress. That the government would seek to be relieved of such a basic measure of accountability does not reflect well on an administration that in its first day promised to
bring transparency and truth back to government.
Forever wars don’t end just because we say they are over, especially not for those who have been left behind and have no choice but to keep fighting. If the president is not willing to uphold this country’s promises, I hope that our courts will show the world that we are a nation that abides by commitments, especially those enshrined in our laws.
Wars don’t end for abandoned American allies
Hours after the last C-17 transport jet departed Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport last Aug. 31, President Joe Biden addressed the nation to remind us that he had kept his campaign promise to end the war in Afghanistan. The irony of the president focusing on an honored commitment relating to Afghanistan has haunted many of us who work on evacuating at-risk Afghans ever since, resurfacing again last week in a court filing by the government.
On May 24, the Biden administration quietly filed a motion in federal court asking to be relieved of a court-ordered plan to promptly adjudicate long-pending Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applications from Afghans and Iraqis who are seeking safe passage to the U.S.
The SIV program was set up by Congress in 2007 and 2009 so that Iraqis and Afghans, respectively, could assist American military efforts while knowing that their futures would be secure in the U.S. should their service in support of America’s missions put them and their families in danger.
The court order in question sought to enforce a bipartisan congressionally mandated requirement that the State Department process these visa requests in no more than 9 months in order to make the promise of protection meaningful — a requirement that had been so egregiously disregarded that it required intervention by a federal judge who found the government’s conduct to be unlawful.
Despite these court obligations and despite knowing that tens of thousands of at-risk Afghan allies were awaiting processing of their visas, the Biden administration did virtually nothing in the lead up to its withdrawal from Afghanistan to ensure that those Afghans would not be left behind.
Now the administration is asking a judge to release it not only from its obligation to the court but also from its commitments to SIV applicants who still believe what they were told: their service to America would not be forgotten and, for Afghan applicants, that they would not be left to an almost certain death at the hands of the Taliban.
While many Afghans were able to leave the country in the chaos that ensued last August, even by the State Department’s own admission, the vast majority of those whom the United States evacuated were not the long-pending SIV applicants. As the Taliban assumed control of the country, SIV applicants went into hiding and remain in fear for their lives and the lives of their families.
I know because I still hear from them and those focused on their plight almost every day.
I hear from translators and interpreters who worked alongside American forces for nearly two decades in some of the most dangerous and inhospitable territory in which the U.S. military has ever operated.
I hear from teenage children who grew up with parents working on U.S.-led development projects and who have now taken on the mantle of securing the debt of safe passage owed to their families by the U.S.
I hear from ordinary Americans selflessly working on resettling Afghan evacuees, who have heard about the horrors these people, particularly SIV visa recipients, have escaped. They cannot believe that our government would turn its back on anyone who it had promised to rescue from the scenario unfolding in Afghanistan right now.
I also hear from many furious American veterans — many of whom made promises on behalf of their country that their government now appears unwilling to honor. They talk about the lives saved and the mission-critical support they received from many of these SIV applicants and they, like me, sit in disbelief that their government would break trust in such a profound way and, in doing so, make them unwilling accomplices in this fissure.
In its most recent filing with the court, the administration argues that circumstances in Afghanistan have changed. This is true, of course, but those changes largely stemmed from policy choices the U.S. made and have only made the need for a court-ordered remedy more urgent. For at-risk SIV applicants, circumstances have changed too: many are now just one house-to-house search by the Taliban away from torture and death.
The thrust of the administration’s argument is that it has done all it can for Afghans at this point and that it has other crises requiring its attention — a claim that is shocking and offensive given the many ways the Administration has found to fail Afghans. Its position appears even more indefensible given the very modest requirement imposed by the court: a good faith effort by the State Department to speed up processing of these SIV applications and to report on its progress. That the government would seek to be relieved of such a basic measure of accountability does not reflect well on an administration that in its first day promised to bring transparency and truth back to government.
Forever wars don’t end just because we say they are over, especially not for those who have been left behind and have no choice but to keep fighting. If the president is not willing to uphold this country’s promises, I hope that our courts will show the world that we are a nation that abides by commitments, especially those enshrined in our laws.
Joseph M. Azam, is a lawyer and serves as Board Chair of the Afghan-American Foundation, a national 501(c)(3) organization focused on representing and advancing the interests of Afghan-Americans.
7. Gina Haspel Observed Waterboarding at C.I.A. Black Site, Psychologist Testifies
Gina Haspel Observed Waterboarding at C.I.A. Black Site, Psychologist Testifies
June 3, 2022
The testimony emerged in pretrial hearings in the Cole bombing case at Guantánamo Bay, where the war court is wrestling with the legacy of torture after 9/11.
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Gina Haspel oversaw a C.I.A. black site in Thailand before becoming the agency’s director in 2018.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
June 3, 2022, 6:44 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — During Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing to become director of the C.I.A. in 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein asked her if she had overseen the interrogations of a Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, which included the use of a waterboard.
Ms. Haspel declined to answer, saying it was part of her classified career.
While there has been reporting about her oversight of a C.I.A. black site in Thailand where Mr. Nashiri was waterboarded, and where Ms. Haspel wrote or authorized memos about his torture, the precise details of her work as the chief of base, the C.I.A. officer who oversaw the prison, have been shrouded in official secrecy.
But testimony at a hearing last month in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, included a revelation about the former C.I.A. director’s long and secretive career. James E. Mitchell, a psychologist who helped develop the agency’s interrogation program, testified that the chief of base at the time, whom he referred to as Z9A in accordance with court rules, watched while he and a teammate subjected Mr. Nashiri to “enhanced interrogation” that included waterboarding at the black site.
Z9A is the code name used in court for Ms. Haspel.
The C.I.A. has never acknowledged Ms. Haspel’s work at the black site, and the use of the code name represented the court’s acceptance of an agency policy of not acknowledging state secrets — even those that have already been spilled. Former officials long ago revealed that she ran the black site in Thailand from October 2002 until December 2002, during the time Mr. Nashiri was being tortured, which Dr. Mitchell described in his testimony.
Guantánamo Bay is one of the few places where America is still wrestling with the legacy of torture in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Torture has loomed over the pretrial phase of the death penalty cases for years and is likely to continue to do so as hearings resume over the summer.
Defense teams have been asking military judges to exclude certain evidence from the war crimes trials of accused Qaeda operatives as tainted by not just torture but also cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In May, that meant revisiting what happened nearly 20 years ago at the secret prison in Thailand.
During three separate sessions, Dr. Mitchell held a cloth over the man’s face and adjusted it to direct the water as Dr. Jessen poured.
Dr. Mitchell testified that Mr. Nashiri was so small that they thought he might slide out of his Velcro restraints during portions of the waterboarding. To let Mr. Nashiri breathe between pours, interrogators pivoted him 90 degrees, from lying on his back to a standing position, still strapped to a gurney.
The interrogation team shifted to other “coercive techniques,” including forcing the prisoner to spend time in a small confinement box. Dr. Mitchell said he had a “general memory of what was done” — the detainee, who was nude and sometimes hooded, was probably slapped and had the back of his head slammed into a burlap-covered wall — but testified that he did not have a “blow-by-blow recollection of any of that stuff.”
It was previously known that by the time Mr. Nashiri was waterboarded in late 2002, Ms. Haspel had taken over as the chief of base at the secret prison in Thailand. It has also been reported that she drafted cables relating what happened to Mr. Nashiri and what was learned during his interrogations and debriefings.
But Dr. Mitchell’s testimony went further. He testified that the chief of base observed the sessions, though she did not participate in them.
The law firm that employs Ms. Haspel, King & Spalding L.L.P., declined to comment and referred questions to the C.I.A., which also declined to comment.
Dr. Mitchell never mentioned the person by name. Instead, because she was serving in a clandestine role at the time, he was required to refer to the chief of base as Z9A, or, as one lawyer sounded it out, “Zulu Nine Alpha.”
The codes are part of the choreography of the hearings at Guantánamo Bay, where the court has a mute button to protect against inadvertent disclosures of classified information and prosecutors work with the C.I.A. to keep official secrets out of the public record.
Prosecutors in the death-penalty cases, working with members of the intelligence community, assigned alphanumeric codes to most C.I.A. staff members who worked at the black sites. Nations where the C.I.A. had prisons are referred to by numbers. For Dr. Mitchell’s hearing, prosecutors provided him with a secret list of names and alphanumerics — a key of sorts that lawyers in court called “a crosswalk.”
For example, Dr. Mitchell referred to the agency’s chief interrogator in 2002, who died not long after he oversaw some of Mr. Nashiri’s harshest interrogations, as NX2.
And although Ms. Haspel’s role as chief of base at the black site in Thailand is widely known, it is still considered a state secret.
The judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., agreed to allow Dr. Mitchell to testify because the C.I.A. had destroyed videotapes that defense lawyers argue showed the psychologists torturing and interrogating Mr. Nashiri and another prisoner at the black site in Thailand. Defense lawyers said that deprived them of potential evidence, including something they might have wanted to show a military jury deciding whether to impose a death penalty.
The disclosure that the C.I.A. had destroyed the tapes — most of them showing Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee taken into custody and known to be tortured by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks — prompted the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the black site program.
Ms. Haspel has acknowledged her role in the destruction of those tapes as a chief of staff to the operations chief, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. At her confirmation hearing, she said, “I would also make clear that I did not appear on the tapes.”
Observers at the site in Thailand watched waterboarding and other interrogations via a closed-circuit video feed to a separate room. At one point, the C.I.A. sent some staff members to the black site to watch the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah. But, Dr. Mitchell testified, Ms. Haspel was not among them.
The Senate Intelligence Committee study of the C.I.A. program, only a part of which is public, said that interrogators wanted to stop using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Mr. Nashiri because he was answering direct questions, but they were overruled by headquarters.
Mr. Nashiri would also be tortured later, after Dr. Mitchell had taken him to a different C.I.A. black site. Another interrogator revved a drill next to the naked detainee’s hooded head, apparently to try to get him to divulge Qaeda plots. At another black site in 2004, the C.I.A. infused a dietary supplement into his rectum for refusing to eat. His Navy lawyer has called the procedure rape.
8. Russia hits Kyiv with missiles; Putin warns West on supplies
Why is Putin attacking his equipment when we said we will not give Ukraine weapons that can fire into Russia? Our restraint does not lead to Putin's restraint? (note my sarcasm).
Russia hits Kyiv with missiles; Putin warns West on supplies
AP · by JOHN LEICESTER · June 5, 2022
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia took aim at Western military supplies for Ukraine with airstrikes in Kyiv on Sunday that it said destroyed tanks donated from abroad, as President Vladimir Putin warned that any Western deliveries of long-range rocket systems to Ukraine would prompt Moscow to hit “objects that we haven’t yet struck.”
The cryptic threat of a military escalation from the Russian leader didn’t specify what the new targets might be, but it comes days after the United States announced plans to deliver $700 million of security assistance for Ukraine that includes four precision-guided, medium-range rocket systems, helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, radars, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more.
Military analysts say Russia is hoping to overrun the embattled eastern Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have fought the Ukrainian government for years, before any weapons that might turn the tide arrive. The Pentagon said earlier this week it will take at least three weeks to get the precision U.S. weapons and trained troops onto the battlefield.
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Russian forces pounded railway facilities and other infrastructure early Sunday in Kyiv, which had previously seen weeks of eerie calm. Ukraine’s nuclear plant operator, Energoatom, said one cruise missile buzzed the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear plant, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) to the south, on its way to the capital — citing the dangers of such a near miss.
There was no immediate confirmation from Ukraine that the Russian airstrikes had destroyed tanks.
Kyiv hadn’t faced any such strikes since the April 28 visit of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. The early morning attack triggered air raid alarms and showed that Russia still had the capability and willingness to hit at Ukraine’s heart since abandoning its wider offensive across the country to instead focus its efforts in the east.
In a posting on the Telegram app, the Russian Defense Ministry said high-precision, long-range air-launched missiles were used. It said the strikes on the outskirts of Kyiv destroyed T-72 tanks supplied by Eastern European countries and other armored vehicles located in buildings of a car-repair business.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has led to untold tens of thousands of civilian and troop deaths, driven millions from their homes, sparked vast sanctions against Putin’s government and allies, and strangled exports of critical wheat and other grains from Ukraine through Black Sea ports — limiting access to bread and other products in Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
In a television interview on Sunday, Putin lashed out at Western deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, saying they aim to prolong the conflict.
“All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: To drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said, alluding to U.S. plans to supply multiple launch rocket systems to Kyiv. He insisted such supplies were unlikely to change much for the Ukrainian government, which he said was merely making up for losses of rockets of similar range that they already had.
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If Kyiv gets longer-range rockets, he added, Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we haven’t yet struck.”
The missiles hit Kyiv’s Darnytski and Dniprovski districts, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app, punctuating the Kremlin’s recently reduced goal of seizing the entire Donbas. Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years in the Donbas and established self-proclaimed republics.
In recent days, Russian forces have focused on capturing the city of Sievierodonetsk.
A billowing pillar of smoke filled the air with an acrid odor in Kyiv’s eastern Darnystki district, and the charred, blackened wreckage of a warehouse-type structure was smoldering. Police near the site told an Associated Press reporter that military authorities had banned the taking of images. Soldiers also blocked off a road in a nearby area leading toward a large railway yard.
The sites struck included facilities for the state rail company, Ukrzaliznytsia, said Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, on Telegram. The cruise missiles appeared to have been launched from a Tu-95 bomber flying over the Caspian Sea, the Air Force Command said on Facebook. It said air defense units shot down one missile.
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Energoatom said one cruise missile came dangerously close to the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant. It said the missile “flew critically low” and that Russian forces “still do not understand that even the smallest fragment of a missile that can hit a working power unit can cause a nuclear catastrophe and radiation leak.”
Elsewhere, Russian forces continued their push to take ground in eastern Ukraine, with missile and airstrikes carried out on cities and villages of the Luhansk region, with the war now past the 100-day mark.
Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said on Telegram that “airstrikes by Russian Ka-52 helicopters were carried out in the areas of Girske and Myrna Dolyna, by Su-25 aircraft - on Ustynivka,” while Lysychansk was hit by a missile from the Tochka-U complex.
A total of 13 houses were damaged in Girske, and five in Lysychansk. Another airstrike was reported in the eastern city of Kramatorsk by its mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko. No one was killed in the attack, he said, but two of the city’s enterprises sustained “significant damage.”
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On Sunday morning, Ukraine’s General Staff accused Russian forces of using phosphorus munitions in the village of Cherkaski Tyshky in the Kharkiv region. The claim couldn’t be independently verified.
The update also confirmed strikes on Kyiv, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday. It wasn’t immediately clear from the statement which infrastructure facilities in Kyiv were hit.
The General Staff said Russian forces continue assault operations in Sievierodonetsk, one of two key cities left to be captured in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. The Russians control the eastern part of the city, the update said, and are focusing on trying to encircle Ukrainian forces in the area and “blocking off main logistical routes.”
The U.K. military said in its daily intelligence update that Ukrainian counterattacks in Sieverodonetsk were “likely blunting the operational momentum Russian forces previously gained through concentrating combat units and firepower.” Russian forces previously had been making a string of advances in the city, but Ukrainian fighters have pushed back in recent days.
The statement also said Russia’s military was partly relying on reserve forces of the separatists in the Luhansk region.
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“These troops are poorly equipped and trained, and lack heavy equipment in comparison to regular Russian units,” the intelligence update said, adding that “this approach likely indicates a desire to limit casualties suffered by regular Russian forces.”
On the diplomatic front, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was heading to Serbia for talks with President Aleksandar Vucic early this week, followed by a visit to Turkey on Tuesday, where the Russian envoy is expected to discuss Ukraine with his Turkish counterpart.
Turkey has been trying to work with U.N. and the warring countries to help clear the way for Ukrainian grain to be exported to Turkish ports, though no deal on the issue appeared imminent.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser urged European nations to respond with “more sanctions, more weapons” to Sunday’s missile attacks.
Mykhailo Podolyak referenced remarks Friday by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said Putin had made a “historic error” by invading Ukraine, but that world powers shouldn’t “humiliate Russia” so that a diplomatic exit could be found when the fighting stops.
Ukrainian authorities said Ukraine and Russia had exchanged bodies of killed troops this week, in the first officially confirmed swap. Ukraine’s Ministry for Reintegration of Occupied Territories said Saturday each side had exchanged 160 bodies Thursday on the front line in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, parts of which are under Russian control. Russian officials haven’t commented on the exchange.
At the Vatican, Pope Francis made one of his strongest appeals for a cease-fire and peace negotiations in Ukraine, urging leaders: “Don’t bring the world to ruins, please. Don’t bring the world to ruins.” He made the plea during his traditional Sunday blessing from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, asking leaders to hear “the desperate cries of the people who suffer” more than 100 days after the Russian invasion.
___
AP · by JOHN LEICESTER · June 5, 2022
9. Al-Qaida enjoying a haven in Afghanistan under Taliban, UN warns
Four "simple" steps (simple to say, hard to accomplish):
Deny sanctuary
Deny access to resources
Deny movement
Separate the population from terrorists/insurgents
Afghanistan is again an AQ sanctuary. Which is no surprise to anyone.
Al-Qaida enjoying a haven in Afghanistan under Taliban, UN warns
Intelligence report raises fears country could again become base for international terrorists
Al-Qaida has a haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban and “increased freedom of action” with the potential of launching new long-distance attacks in coming years, a UN report based on intelligence supplied by member states says.
The assessment, by the UN committee charged with enforcing sanctions on the Taliban and others that may threaten the security of Afghanistan, will raise concerns that the country could once again become a base for international terrorist attacks after the withdrawal of US and Nato troops last year.
Critics of the US president, Joe Biden, will point to the report’s description of a “close relationship” between al-Qaida and the Taliban as evidence that his decision to pull out all US forces was an error.
However, a feared influx of foreign extremists to Afghanistan has not materialised, with only a small number of arrivals detected.
Though al-Qaida has been overshadowed by the violence of Islamic State in recent years, it remains a potential threat with a presence in parts of south Asia, the Middle East and the Sahel. Several dozen al-Qaida senior leaders are based in Afghanistan, as well as affiliated groups such as al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent.
The Taliban have repeatedly said they are adhering to an agreement they signed with the US in 2020, before taking power, in which they promised to fight terrorists, and they have insisted Afghanistan will not be used as a launching pad for attacks against other countries.
The report credits the Taliban with making efforts to restrain al-Qaida, but raises concerns that these may not last.
An undisclosed number of al-Qaida members are reported to be living in Kabul’s former diplomatic quarter, where they may have access to meetings at the foreign affairs ministry, the report’s authors say, although they say this information is not confirmed.
The report also says a sudden spate of statements and communications from al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, suggests “he may be able to lead more effectively than was possible before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan”.
A previous UN report said Zawahiri was seriously ill, and some officials have suggested the 70-year-old may be dead.
The Egyptian-born veteran militant has focused on expanding grassroots support and presence in the Islamic world since taking over al-Qaida in 2011, when Osama bin Laden was killed in a US special forces raid in Pakistan.
Although the group is unlikely to mount or direct attacks outside Afghanistan for the next year or two, owing to a lack of capability and Taliban restraint, its long-term objective is still to return to “global jihad”, the report says.
It says the Taliban’s commitment to preventing al-Qaida from launching an international terrorism campaign “is uncertain in the medium to longer term”. This effort received a boost when the Taliban took over Kabul, it says, with al-Qaida able to use the apparent victory of the Islamist militia to attract new recruits and funding and inspire affiliates globally.
In April al-Qaida released a video in which Zawahiri praised an Indian Muslim woman who in February defied a ban on wearing the traditional headscarf, or hijab. The footage was the first evidence in more than a year that he was alive.
A previous video of Zawahiri, which circulated on the anniversary last year of 9/11, did not refer to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in mid-August. It did mention the attack on 1 January 2021 attack on Russian troops near the northern Syrian city of Raqqa.
In his most recent video, Zawahiri referred to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, blaming “US weakness” for the war. “Here [the US] is after its defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the economic disasters caused by the 9/11 invasions, after the corona pandemic, and after it left its ally Ukraine as prey for the Russians,” he said.
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The UN report suggests most senior al-Qaida leaders are currently based in the eastern region of Afghanistan, from Zabul province north towards Kunar and along the border with Pakistan. The border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan is lined with inhospitable hills that have served as strongholds for a number of militant groups.
The Taliban attempted to restrict the activities of Bin Laden when in power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, but did not prevent a series of attacks on US targets that culminated in the 9/11 attacks.
Like al-Qaida, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan, which has been fighting the Taliban, is not thought capable of mounting international attacks before 2023 at the earliest, the UN report says. The group is thought to have 1,500-4,000 fighters, also concentrated in the east of Afghanistan.
10. Opinion | We Can’t Be Ukraine Hawks Forever
The headline might give some hope to Putin and confirm his assessment of Western staying power. But there is more to the OpEd.
Excerpts:
So in the realm of practical policy to date, I have joined the hawks. Our military support for Ukraine has worked: We have safeguarded a sovereign nation and weakened a rival without dangerous escalation from the Russian side. And for now, with Russia continuing to mount offensives while mostly avoiding the bargaining table, there isn’t any obvious “off-ramp” to peace that we ought to force Kyiv to take.
...
These theories all seem to confuse what is desirable with what is likely, and what is morally ideal with what is strategically achievable. I have written previously about the risks of nuclear escalation in the event of a Russian military collapse, risks that hawkish theories understate. But given the state of the war right now, the more likely near-future scenario is one where Russian collapse remains a pleasant fancy, the conflict becomes stalemated and frozen, and we have to put our Ukrainian policy on a sustainable footing without removing Putin’s regime or dismantling the Russian empire.
...
Those goals are compatible with what we’ve done to date, and they can obviously be adapted if better opportunities suddenly arise. But a good strategic theory needs to assume difficulty, challenge, limits. The danger now is that the practical achievements of our hawkish policy encourages the opposite kind of theorizing, a hubris that squanders our still-provisional success.
Opinion | We Can’t Be Ukraine Hawks Forever
Ross Douthat
We Can’t Be Ukraine Hawks Forever
June 4, 2022
Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
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Sure, it works in practice, but does it work in theory? Over the years I’ve heard this parody of academic pomposity put in the lips of various targets, from French intellectuals to University of Chicago economists. Lately, though, I’ve begun thinking it myself — about the hawkish side in the debate over the Ukraine War, whose practical policies have so far achieved favorable results but whose deeper theories of the conflict still seem implausible, unworkable or dangerous.
I was not a Ukraine hawk before the war came. I felt the United States had overextended itself with its half-open door to NATO membership, and that eastern Ukraine, at least, wasn’t defensible against Russian aggression without a full-scale American military commitment. Sending arms to Kyiv probably made sense, but as a means of eventually bogging down a Russian incursion, not stopping it outright. And a Ukrainian collapse, of the kind we saw from our client government in Afghanistan, seemed within the realm of possibility.
The war itself has defied those expectations. The hawks were proven right about Ukraine’s simple capacity to fight. They were proven right that American arms could actually help blunt a Russian invasion, not just create an insurgency behind its lines. And their psychological read on Vladimir Putin has been partially vindicated as well: His choices suggest a man motivated as much by imperial restoration as by anti-NATO defensiveness, and his conduct of the war offers little evidence that there is a stable, permanent peace available even with Ukrainian concessions.
So in the realm of practical policy to date, I have joined the hawks. Our military support for Ukraine has worked: We have safeguarded a sovereign nation and weakened a rival without dangerous escalation from the Russian side. And for now, with Russia continuing to mount offensives while mostly avoiding the bargaining table, there isn’t any obvious “off-ramp” to peace that we ought to force Kyiv to take.
Yet when I read the broader theories of hawkish commentators, their ideas about America’s strategic vision and what kind of endgame we should be seeking in the war, I still find myself baffled by their confidence and absolutism.
For instance, for all their defensive successes, we have not yet established that Ukraine’s military can regain significant amounts of territory in the country’s south and east. Yet we have Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic insisting that only Putin’s defeat and indeed “humiliation” can restore European stability, while elsewhere in the same magazine Casey Michel calls for dismantling the Russian Federation, framed as the “decolonization” of Russia’s remaining empire, as the only policy for lasting peace.
Or again, the United States has currently committed an extraordinary sum to back Ukraine — far more than we spent in foreign aid to Afghanistan in any recent year, for instance — and our support roughly trebles the support offered by the European Union. Yet when this newspaper’s editorial board raised questions about the sustainability of such support, the response from many Ukraine hawks was a furious how dare you — with an emphasis, to quote Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, on Ukraine’s absolute right to fight “until every inch of their territory is free”; America’s strictly “modest” and “advisory” role in Ukrainian decision-making; and the importance of offering Kyiv, if not a blank check, at least a “very very big check with more checks to follow.”
These theories all seem to confuse what is desirable with what is likely, and what is morally ideal with what is strategically achievable. I have written previously about the risks of nuclear escalation in the event of a Russian military collapse, risks that hawkish theories understate. But given the state of the war right now, the more likely near-future scenario is one where Russian collapse remains a pleasant fancy, the conflict becomes stalemated and frozen, and we have to put our Ukrainian policy on a sustainable footing without removing Putin’s regime or dismantling the Russian empire.
In that scenario, our plan cannot be to keep writing countless checks while tiptoeing modestly around the Ukrainians and letting them dictate the ends to which our guns and weaponry are used. The United States is an embattled global hegemon facing threats more significant than Russia. We are also an internally divided country led by an unpopular president whose majorities may be poised for political collapse. So if Kyiv and Moscow are headed for a multiyear or even multi-decade frozen conflict, we will need to push Ukraine toward its most realistic rather than its most ambitious military strategy. And just as urgently, we will need to shift some of the burden of supporting Kyiv from our own budget to our European allies.
Those goals are compatible with what we’ve done to date, and they can obviously be adapted if better opportunities suddenly arise. But a good strategic theory needs to assume difficulty, challenge, limits. The danger now is that the practical achievements of our hawkish policy encourages the opposite kind of theorizing, a hubris that squanders our still-provisional success.
11. ‘Napalm Girl’ and the enduring power of media myths
Influence. Deliberate and by chance.
A very useful discussion about the power of a photo and the media. I am going to order his book (it is from 2016 and the paperback is $29.95 on Amazon)
The distorting effects of four media myths have become attached to the photograph, which Ut made when he was a 21-year-old photographer for The Associated Press.
Not so.
The napalm attack was carried out by propeller-driven Skyraider aircraft of the South Vietnamese Air Force trying to roust communist forces dug in near the village – as news accounts at the time made clear.
The headline over The New York Times’
report from Trang Bang said: “South Vietnamese Drop Napalm on Own Troops.” stated the “napalm [was] dropped by a Vietnamese air force Skyraider diving onto the wrong target.” Christopher Wain, a veteran British journalist, wrote : “These were South Vietnamese planes dropping napalm on South Vietnamese peasants and troops.”
The myth of
American culpability at Trang Bang began taking hold during the 1972 presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate George McGovern referred to the photograph in a televised speech. The napalm that badly burned Kim Phuc, he declared, had been “dropped in the name of America.”
‘Napalm Girl’ and the enduring power of media myths
Iconic photograph neither hastened end to Vietnam War nor turned US public opinion against the conflict
The “Napalm Girl” photograph of terror-stricken Vietnamese children fleeing an errant aerial attack on their village, taken 50 years ago this month, has rightly been called “a picture that doesn’t rest.”
It is one of those exceptional visual artifacts that draws attention and even controversy years after it was made.
In May 2022, for example, Nick Ut, the photographer who captured the image, and the photo’s central figure, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, made news at the Vatican as they presented a poster-size reproduction of the prize-winning image to Pope Francis, who has emphasized the evils of warfare.
In 2016, Facebook stirred controversy by deleting “Napalm Girl” from a commentary posted at the network because the photograph shows the then-9-year-old Kim Phuc entirely naked.
She had torn away her burning clothes as she and other terrified children ran from their village, Trang Bang, on June 8, 1972. Facebook retracted the decision amid an international uproar about the social network’s free speech policies.
Such episodes signal how “Napalm Girl” is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians. The Pulitzer Prize-winning image, formally known as “The Terror of War,” has also given rise to tenacious media-driven myths.
Phan Thi Kim Phuc, left, is visited by AP photographer Nick Ut in 1973. After taking the photograph of her fleeing in agony in 1972, Ut transported her to a hospital. AP photo
Widely believed – often exaggerated
What are media myths?
These are well-known stories about or by the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, dissolve as apocryphal or wildly exaggerated.
The distorting effects of four media myths have become attached to the photograph, which Ut made when he was a 21-year-old photographer for The Associated Press.
Not so.
The napalm attack was carried out by propeller-driven Skyraider aircraft of the South Vietnamese Air Force trying to roust communist forces dug in near the village – as news accounts at the time made clear.
The headline over The New York Times’ report from Trang Bang said: “South Vietnamese Drop Napalm on Own Troops.” stated the “napalm [was] dropped by a Vietnamese air force Skyraider diving onto the wrong target.” Christopher Wain, a veteran British journalist, wrote : “These were South Vietnamese planes dropping napalm on South Vietnamese peasants and troops.”
The myth of American culpability at Trang Bang began taking hold during the 1972 presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate George McGovern referred to the photograph in a televised speech. The napalm that badly burned Kim Phuc, he declared, had been “dropped in the name of America.”
McGovern’s metaphoric claim anticipated similar assertions, including Susan Sontag’s statement in her 1973 book “On Photography,” that Kim Phuc had been “sprayed by American napalm.”
The New York Times headline of June 9, 1972, clearly reported it was a South Vietnamese attack that sprayed napalm on troops and civilians. New York Times archive via The Conversation.
Hastened the war’s end?
Neither is accurate.
Americans’ views about the war had turned negative long before June 1972, as measured by a survey question the Gallup Organization posed periodically.
The question – essentially a proxy for Americans’ views about Vietnam – was whether sending US troops there had been a mistake. When the question was first asked in the summer of 1965, only 24% of respondents said yes, sending in troops had been a mistake.
But by mid-May 1971 – more than a year before “Napalm Girl” was made – 61% of respondents said yes, sending troops had been mistaken policy.
In short, public opinion turned against the war long before “Napalm Girl” entered popular consciousness.
Ubiquitous? Not exactly
Another myth is that “Napalm Girl” appeared on newspaper front pages everywhere in America.
Many large US daily newspapers did publish the photograph. But many newspapers abstained, perhaps because it depicted frontal nudity.
In a review I conducted with a research assistant of 40 leading daily US newspapers – all of which were Associated Press subscribers – 21 titles placed “Napalm Girl” on the front page.
But 14 newspapers – more than one-third of the sample – did not publish “Napalm Girl” at all in the days immediately after its distribution. These included papers in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston and Newark.
Only three of the 40 newspapers examined – The Boston Globe, the New York Post and The New York Times – published editorials specifically addressing the photograph. The editorial in the New York Post, then a liberal-minded newspaper, was prophetic in saying:
“The picture of the children will never leave anyone who saw it.”
12. Wheels coming off Tesla’s China drive
Wheels coming off Tesla’s China drive
Tesla was making fast gains in China’s revving EV market but then the the pandemic and stock market turmoil crashed the party
JUNE 4, 2022
Quick take:
- After taking the US electric vehicle market by storm, Tesla set its sights on tackling the competitive Chinese EV market – the world’s largest, driven by government support and incentives.
- As of the first four months of 2022, Tesla sold the third-most electric vehicles in China and was the only foreign company to place models on the list of the country’s top 10 EV vehicles sold.
- Regardless of the recent market and pandemic turmoil – not to mention CEO Elon Musk’s personal antics – Tesla is likely to continue expanding its reach in the Chinese EV market over the long term.
The tumble has been a sharp reversal, if likely only a temporary one, of the company’s fortunes in China. After taking the US electric vehicle market by storm, the company had set its sights on tackling the competitive Chinese EV market, with impressive results.
Just last year, the official Global Times newspaper reported that China had become Tesla’s fastest-growing market. Sales in China were largely credited with helping the company turn its first overall profit in 2020.
“Not satisfied with dominating the US market, the company turned to China to expand its vehicle sales,” scholar Eric Harwit writes in a recent East-West Center AsiaPacific Issues paper, “Tesla Goes to China.” The paper explores Tesla’s expansion into the Chinese market over the last eight years and the various successes and struggles it has faced adapting to China’s playbook.
“The interest in China came naturally, because China’s overall vehicle market has been larger than that of the United States since 2008,” Harwit writes. China now also boasts the world’s largest EV market, driven by government financial support and consumer incentives. Notably, China’s government is aiming to have EVs make up 40 percent of all vehicle sales by 2030.
Government incentives
Since 2009, the Chinese government has offered incentives for manufacturers and consumers of electric vehicles, creating an attractive marketplace for EV producers.
One such subsidy, according to Harwit, provided taxi fleets and local government agencies with up to $8,800 for each hybrid or EV purchased, expanding to include consumers in 2010. The following year, the government made pure-electric, fuel-cell and plug-in hybrid vehicles exempt from its annual vehicle tax.
Charging stations were also set up by the state electric utility across major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. By 2019, there were 1.2 million charging stations in place, with plans to build 600,000 more.
As of 2021, Harwit writes, pure-electric vehicles with a minimum driving range of 300 kilometers received a subsidy of up to $3,500, while a plug-in hybrid could receive a subsidy of about $1,300. License-plate fees, set up by China to limit the number of cars on already-congested roads, were also waived for plug-ins. And in 2015, EV buyers in Beijing were given exemptions from rules that restrict driving on city roads during rush hours.
Photo: Electrek
Chinese manufacturers given upper hand
Most of China’s leading domestic EV manufacturers are either state-owned enterprises or private companies, though the top-selling electric car– the $4,500 Wuling Hongguang Mini EV– is a joint venture between a state-owned and foreign firm. This deviates slightly from China’s conventional gas-powered car market, which has long been dominated by private joint ventures with foreign car companies such as
Volkswagen, General Motors, and Toyota.
According to data cited by Harwit, Tesla, which does not operate as a joint venture, saw its Model 3 rank as the second-best-selling electric vehicle in China in April 2021 and was the only foreign company to make the list of the country’s top 15 EV vehicles sold at the time.
“Chinese government rules mandate that new foreign EV factories need a minimum production capacity of 100,000 electric passenger cars or 5,000 electric commercial vehicles,” Harwit notes, “thereby presenting a high investment hurdle for new foreign entrants.”
Gaining trust
Tesla began selling vehicles in China in 2014 but faced several hurdles before hitting its stride. “Through 2015, vehicle delivery delays and negative perception of charging options led to poor sales,” Harwit explains. A 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles also added to the cost of the car, making it less affordable than locally sourced options. (As of this past March, the cheapest Tesla model sold for about $49,900 in China.)
Soon, Tesla installed thousands of EV chargers to address concerns. By 2016, the company reported that it had delivered 11,000 vehicles and saw over $1 billion in revenue in China – accounting for more than 15 percent of Tesla’s total annual revenue.
The following year, the car manufacturer announced that it would build a factory in Shanghai in order to increase its sales volume, ultimately establishing a facility in Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone in order to avoid finding a joint-venture partner and to better protect its intellectual property.
In 2017, Tesla announced that it had sold a 5% stake in the company to Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings for $1.8 billion, a move that symbolized its ongoing connection to the Chinese market. It was able to open its first “gigafactory” in Shanghai in 2019 to make batteries and cars, and by 2020 it produced 140,000 Model 3 vehicles there.
In 2021, it doubled its factory size to produce Model Y cars, leading to record sales for Tesla Shanghai and more cost-competitive vehicles. And by the end of the year, Tesla’s production in China represented roughly half of its 936,000 vehicles delivered globally.
In addition, the company began producing charging stations at its dedicated Supercharger factory in Shanghai, adding about 7,000 Supercharger stalls in China by last August. It also completed its “Silk Road” Supercharger route in June, making long-distance travel from east to west in China more accessible.
Tesla China supercharger. Photo: Teslrati
Continued growth likely
Notwithstanding all the recent economic and pandemic turmoil – not to mention Musk’s personal antics – Tesla is likely to continue expanding its reach in the Chinese EV market over the long term.
However, it may soon face another kind of challenge, Harwit writes: The Chinese government has said that it would cut subsidies on new energy vehicles by 30 percent this year, before eliminating them completely at the end of the year.
Still, provincial and municipal governments have continued to subsidize up to 30 percent of charging station installation costs.
“In addition to the prestige Chinese consumers receive by purchasing the American vehicle,” Harwit concludes, “the manufacturing capacity and supporting infrastructure Tesla has created in China should put it in good stead with both the nation’s citizenry and the Chinese government.
Republished with the permission of the East-West Center. Read the original here.
13. The Great Collusion: How Big Defense Took Over The White House – OpEd
Quite a critique.
The MICC+? The military industrial congressional complex + the White House?
The Great Collusion: How Big Defense Took Over The White House – OpEd
The Biden administration’s leadership failure is the net effect of Capitol Hill’s revolving door politics. The White House is not in charge. The Big Defense is.
In a recent China policy speech, secretary of state Antony Blinken managed to add a bunch of new “strategic ambiguities” to the Biden administration’s old contradictions. Progressive Democrats have lost trust in the administration. They are concerned with American welfare and the triple bear market in US stocks, bonds, and cash.
With de-globalization, international macroeconomic conditions are deteriorating. The number of globally displaced people exceeds 100 million for the first time on record, propelled by the war in Ukraine and other fatal conflicts. The fragile status quo is more likely to worsen than not, due to the Fed’s rate hikes and quantitative tightening.
Yet, the White House seems intent to escalate its new Cold War with China. That’s not in line with America’s national interest, as evidenced by the dramatic plunge of Biden’s approval ratings, but it will benefit the Big Defense.
Let’s start with the links (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Influence, Collusion and Geopolitics
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Collusion with Big Defense
As the president’s coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs on the National Security Council (NSC), Kurt Campbell is president Biden’s Asia czar. In 2019, he and Sullivan introduced their China doctrine of stiff “competition without catastrophe,” which would allow America to “both challenge and coexist with China.” The doctrine is central to the “pivot to Asia,” which Campbell developed in the Obama administration.
The illusionary assumption is that the escalation of discord into open animosity is viable without collateral damage. Replacing the old Soviet Union with China, Campbell and Sullivan declared Beijing America’s pre-eminent rival; and hence the target of the “Indo-Pacific” containment.
As in the ‘50s, the effective objective is to militarize containment and minimize US costs by diversifying risks to allies and proxy conflicts to Asia. The idea seems to be to fight to the last Asian.
The new Cold War promoters like to quote George Kennan, the architect of US containment against Kremlin in 1947. Here’s the irony: Kennan himself pushed for dialogue with Moscow already by 1948. He denounced Truman administration’s “distorted and militarized” version of containment, which “led to 40 years of unnecessary, fearfully expensive and disoriented process of the Cold War.”
Campbell-Brainard, Pentagon, Fed and Big Defense
One of president Biden’s first acts was to issue a new ethics pledge to weaken shadow lobbying. Yet, his key figures in defense, security and foreign affairs have made fortunes in such lobbying. Campbell is not just a veteran diplomat, but former CEO of the Asia Group LLC. By its own testimony, the secretive company has Fortune 500 clients, particularly in defense and military high-tech.
In January 2021, Campbell’s appointment unleashed a public debate in the US, due to his portfolio of ex-clients rife with potential conflicts of interests. “Shadow lobbying” outfits, like Campbell’s firm, call themselves consultants to avoid restrictions associated with traditional lobbying. Campbell himself got $25,000 monthly retainer from several defense firms.
In November 2021, Biden nominated Fed governor Lael Brainard to serve as its vice chair. In the past, Brainard was seen as a dove. As the Fed is tackling soaring inflation months belatedly, it is overshooting in a hurry. After the confirmation of her appointment, Brainard is now promoting rapid rate hikes. She is an accomplished veteran Democrat, like her husband – Kurt Campbell.
So, in addition to Campbell’s alleged conflicts of interests, the husband-wife linkage reinforces critics’ perceptions of tacit collusion in decision-making by the executive branch, monetary chiefs, capital markets, Pentagon and the Big Defense.
And Campbell is not alone.
Blinken, Sullivan, CNAS, and the list goes on
Jake Sullivan advised some of the world’s biggest businesses at Macro Advisory Partners, a secretive firm that is run by ex-British spy chiefs. In that role, Sullivan, who had been negotiating the Obama JCPOA nuclear deal, used his expertise to help companies exploit the opening of the Iranian economy.
Macro Advisory also guides state-owned entities, such as Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US. Unsurprisingly, the militarization of US Taiwan policy shifts toward and weapons shipments to Taiwan has escalated in parallel with Taipei’s big donations to Biden’s corporate proxies.
Blinken has his alleged conflicts of interest. Between the Obama and Biden administrations, Blinken co-headed WestExec Advisors with Michèle Flournoy, Obama’s undersecretary of defense and a military expert. With key clientele in defense industry, private equity, and hedge funds, WestExec ensured Blinken over $1.2 million dollars in compensation.
Even before WestExec, Flournoy was making over $450,000 a year as a head of a think-tank, Center of New American Security (CNAS), which she co-founded in 2007 with Kurt Campbell. Biden’s former press secretary Jen Psaki and current CIA head Avril Haines, who had contributed to Obama’s drone program for extrajudicial killings, also served in CNAS, which was led by CEO Victoria Nuland, a neoconservative uber-hawk, who has played a key role in the Ukraine escalation as Biden’s undersecretary of state.
The top donors of the CNAS include the crème de la crème of the Big Defense: Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon; energy giants Chevron and Exxon, and Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
Pentagon, Austin, Raytheon, Pine Island and revolving doors
Flournoy and Blinken also served as strategic partners in a private equity firm Pine Island Capital Partners, led by controversial investment banker John Thain who tanked Merrill Lynch in 2008, while paying himself bonuses along the way. Amid the subprime debacle, Thain spent $1.2 million to remodel his office, including a $35,000 golden toilet.
WestExec’s clients include Winward, an Israeli AI venture launched by Israeli naval intelligence officers with the country’s former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi on its board. Winward’s lead investors was Li-Ka Shing, the Hong Kong billionaire, through VC fund Horizons Ventures.
By late 2020, Pine Island Capital, now linked with the Biden administration, was well-positioned to cash in on the US Covid-19 response, investing in government contractors. The firm also employed Lloyd Austin, the first black secretary of defense.
A veteran of the US Army (1975-2012), Austin has a remarkable story, but it, too, reflects revolving door hazards. As head of US Forces in Iraq, he befriended Biden’s son, Beau (Hunter, the other son, was linked with the Trump era “Ukrainegate”). He was then nominated to become the Army’s vice chief of staff. A year later, then-president Obama tapped Austin to head up US Central Command.
After the Trump triumph, Austin left the Army and joined the board of steel colossus Nucor, a beneficiary of Trump’s tariff wars, and military contractors that merged in 2020 with Raytheon, a top Big Defense lobbying spender. Austin earned seven figures from the defense companies until he stepped down from all three board positions following his nomination in 2020.
Inflated China threat for more spending
With the deterioration of macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical divisions have rapidly increased from the Middle East to Asia, even to Europe? Big Defense has been the prime beneficiary (Figure 2). As Investor’s Business Daily headlined in March, “Russia’s War On Ukraine Makes Defense Investors $49 Billion Richer.” Without a full policy reset, this is just a prelude to far worse in Asia.
Figure 2 With Geopolitics, Economies Falter but Defense Stocks Climb
Source: Tradingeconomics; DifferenceGroup
In mid-May, NBC’s Meet the Press aired a segment, which imagined a conflict over Taiwan in 2027. In the war game simulation, run by CNAS, the US-Sino tensions burst into an open war. What made Beijing opt for the year 2027? Nothing. The year was “postulated” by the controversial outgoing Commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson already in March 2021.
What’s the CNAS solution? Flournoy demands US to develop “the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines, and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.” Whether that would contribute to peace is debatable, but it is certainly in line with the interests of CNAS donors, such as Northrop Grumman, Austin’s alumni in Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and of course Taipei’s US office.
The original version was published by China-US Focus on June 2, 2022
14. U.S. Warship Arrives in Stockholm for Military Exercises, and as a Warning
U.S. Warship Arrives in Stockholm for Military Exercises, and as a Warning
For Sweden and Finland, which want to join NATO, the U.S.S. Kearsarge is a promise of the protection that membership in the alliance would bring against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
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Watching the U.S.S. Kearsarge arrive in Stockholm on Thursday.
By
June 4, 2022, 1:28 p.m. ET
ABOARD U.S.S. KEARSARGE, in the port of Stockholm — If ever there was a potent symbol of how much Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has altered Europe, the sight of this enormous battleship, bristling with 26 warplanes and 2,400 Marines and sailors, moored among the pleasure craft and tour boats that ply this port, would certainly be it.
“No one in Stockholm can miss that there is this big American ship here in our city,” said Micael Byden, the supreme commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, standing on the amphibious assault ship's deck in the shadow of a MV-22 Osprey under a clear sky on Saturday. “There are more capabilities on this ship,” he marveled, “than I could gather in a garrison.”
In this perennially neutral country that is suddenly not so neutral, the U.S.S. Kearsarge, which showed up just two weeks after Sweden and Finland announced their intention to seek membership in NATO, is the promise of what that membership would bring: protection if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia turns his ire toward his Nordic neighbors.
But the ship is also a warning to Sweden and Finland of their own potential obligations should a conflict arise, as Gen. Mark Milley, America’s most senior military commander, made clear during a visit Saturday.
“The Russians have their Baltic fleet,” General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, but NATO would have its own slew of member countries wrapped around the Baltic Sea once Sweden and Finland join. In essence, the Baltic would become a NATO lake, save for St. Petersburg and Kalingrad.
“From a Russian perspective, that would be very problematic for them, militarily speaking,” General Milley said.
Gen. Mark A. Milley and Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden speaking on the deck of the Kearsarge on Saturday.Credit...Stoyan Nenov/Reuters
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden, appearing in a shipboard news conference beside General Milley, sought to emphasize the defensive nature of NATO.
But military experts say that there is a clear expectation that Sweden and Finland’s accession to the alliance means that they would contribute to any maritime chokeholds that NATO might put in place in the Baltic Sea in the event of a war with Russia, a potentially tall order for the historically nonaligned countries.
Both countries want security assurances, particularly from the United States and other NATO allies, during this interim period while negotiations with Turkey are holding up their formal membership to the military alliance. Sweden’s Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told reporters in Washington two weeks ago that the Pentagon had pledged several interim security measures: U.S. Navy warships steaming in the Baltic Sea, Air Force bombers flying over Scandinavian skies, army forces training together and American specialists helping to thwart any possible Russian cyberattacks.
But while President Biden has pledged that the United States would help defend Sweden and Finland before they join the alliance, American officials have refused to say specifically what form that help would take, beyond what General Milley characterized Saturday as a “modest increase” in joint military exercises.
The refusal of any NATO country to send actual troops into Ukraine, Nordic officials acknowledged, lays bare the difference between promises of military help for friendly countries versus that under a Senate-ratified treaty that says an attack on one is an attack on all — NATO’s famous Article 5.
Still, the Kearsarge is in the Baltic Sea to take part in exercises meant to teach NATO, Swedish and Finnish troops how to carry out amphibious assaults — storming land that has been seized by, say, Russia. It is a hugely complex kind of war operation — think the D-Day landing during World War II — that requires coordination between air, land and naval units in what military planners call a “combined arms” mission.
If the exercises go according to plan, thousands of marines, sailors, pilots and other troops from 16 different countries will be seizing a beach head in the Stockholm archipelago.
The Kearsarge docked in Stockholm on Thursday.
It is exactly the kind of military operation that Russia has not managed to pull off yet in Ukraine, and that inability to do so, military experts say, is a big part of why Russia has not managed to take the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa.
Pentagon officials note that when thousands of Russian marines landed in southern Ukraine on the Sea of Azov coastline on Feb. 25 to target Mariupol, they did so some 43 miles to the east of the city, avoiding having to do an actual contested amphibious assault.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Developments
Card 1 of 3
On the ground. As airstrikes intensified in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the main focus of Russia’s onslaught, street fighting raged in the contested city of Sievierodonetsk. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, warned that the conflict appeared to have become a “war of attrition” and advised allies to be prepared for “the long haul.”
Along with the rupturing of the notion that the Russian military is an efficient machine, the request by Sweden and Finland to join NATO is perhaps the biggest unintended consequence of Mr. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Instead, Mr. Putin is now facing the prospect of a NATO military alliance that is not just on his doorstep but wrapped around part of the house.
The 2004 accession of Latvia and Estonia to NATO stretched its Baltic border with Russia for just over 300 miles; Finland’s joining the alliance would add another 830 miles, putting St. Petersburg almost within artillery range.
Sweden, meanwhile, shares a maritime border with Russia, as does Finland. Within a day of Finland’s leaders announcing their country should apply for NATO membership, the Kearsarge, named after a Civil War Union sloop famous for sinking Confederate ships, was heading to join Finnish and Swedish navies for training.
In fact, NATO has scheduled many shows of force with Sweden and Finland. “A whole host of exercises that didn’t exist on the exercise schedule are there now,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a military expert with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki.
Military vehicles aboard the Kearsarge in Stockholm on Saturday.Credit...Stoyan Nenov/Reuters
The emerging partnership is a two-way street. For NATO, beyond wrapping the alliance all around Russia’s western border, the entry of Sweden and Finland allows military planners to reconceptualize all of northern European defenses. In the past, the alliance had to make compromises about where to concentrate troops, headquarters and command and control to provide to best advantage.
All of this will undoubtedly draw the ire of Mr. Putin, who has long complained about the expansion of the military alliance into what he sees as his own sphere of influence.
“There’s going to be an almost continuous presence of non-Finnish military units in Finland,” Mr. Salonius-Pasternak said. “Are they the key to Finnish defense? No. But it probably adds to the calculus of our eastern neighbor.”
15. Ukraine’s volunteer ‘Kraken’ unit takes the fight to the Russians
Ukraine’s volunteer ‘Kraken’ unit takes the fight to the Russians
Serhii Korolchuk
June 3, 2022 at 3:00 a.m. EDT
RUSKA LOZOVA, Ukraine — The closest Andrii “Belyi” Maleev ever came to having a weapon in his hands was the hammer he used as a construction worker.
Then the Russians came.
A patrol of about 30 soldiers entered Maleev’s village on foot about 6 a.m. March 14, recalled Maleev, 45. Several stood outside his gate, pointing rifles at him, while two others searched his house and demanded to know whether he had any weapons.
When the soldiers left, so did Maleev — to get military training. Eventually, he returned to the village, this time as a rifle-toting member of the Kraken Regiment, a unit that is quickly becoming one of Ukraine’s better-known volunteer forces.
The Kraken unit was formed by Azov Battalion veterans on the day Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, a military spokesman said. That makes the Krakens something like a kid brother to the older Azov unit, whose fighters achieved world renown status last month for their epic last stand inside Azovstal, a sprawling steel complex in the port city of Mariupol.
Like the Azov fighters, whose name comes from the Sea of Azov, the regiment’s name and insignia evoke a different maritime theme: the kraken, a mythical sea monster resembling a giant squid.
Their commander is Konstantin V. Nemichev, a political and military figure in Kharkiv. The son of a schoolteacher and an electrician, Nemichev, 26, launched a political career in the right-wing National Corps party before he graduated from college, including an unsuccessful bid last year to become Kharkiv’s mayor. He drew heavily on the support of rowdy young soccer fans, many of whom now serve in his unit.
Now that the Azov Battalion has been decimated, the Krakens stand to become Ukraine’s most famous band of volunteers — and arguably most controversial, like their Azov brethren. Critics said both have drawn fighters from ultranationalist and far-right groups, an allegation their soldiers reject as Russian propaganda. Although the commanders have acknowledged that far-right soldiers might be among their ranks, they said they are outnumbered by a more diverse group dedicated to defending Ukraine.
The Kraken unit operates somewhat in a gray zone — a force that answers to the Defense Ministry but is not part of Ukraine’s armed forces. Soldiers in Ruska Lozova say the unit has about 1,800 soldiers. The military spokesman declined to say how many serve in the unit.
The Kraken unit — which in recent weeks has helped take back villages north of Kharkiv — filled its ranks with “gym rats,” bouncers and “ultras,” the professional soccer fans who sometimes showed their love for Kharkiv’s Metalist team with riotous behavior. Many also hung out at the same sports bar, a place called the Wall, that was bombed, allegedly by Russian separatists, in 2014. Eleven patrons were injured.
But their unit also draws veterans from the regular army, battle-tested paramilitary fighters from Donbas and other volunteers who range in age from 25 to 60.
William — who would only give his first name because of concerns for his family’s safety — hitchhiked approximately 325 miles from Kyiv to join friends in the unit near the Kharkiv front. Now he walks with a limp from a Russian-made Claymore mine that peppered his right leg with shrapnel. Like others, he went to war after receiving combat training where first aid instruction was more plentiful than ammunition.
And there’s still more than a little DIY in the unit’s warcraft, despite nearly three months of sometimes heavy fighting. Their battle wagons are SUVs, pickup trucks, ATVs and — on this day — a Nissan Murano painted bumper to bumper in green, right down to the hubcaps. The camouflage on Anton’s AK-74 is homemade, too. Worried the factory-issue black finish might stick out in Ukraine’s forests, he painted his weapon in multi-tone greens that look more Grateful Dead tie dye than military camo.
“It was chaotic for the first week and a half,” said Anton, 27, who also only gave his first name for security reasons. He recalled how one soldier, feeling confident that he could instruct his comrades on how to fire a Czech antitank weapon, blew up a wall and injured several people instead.
Even now, on a quick tour of the village, the small Kraken squad is less than disciplined about basic firearm safety, such as pointing the weapon’s muzzle only at the sky or at the ground. While taking cover below a tree from a Russian drone overhead, one soldier leaned the muzzle of AK-74 against his crotch. Inside a blown-out hospital, another soldier knelt over an unexploded tank shell, pretending he was about to poke it with his finger.
Yet Kraken members also have learned to fight by fighting, and their morale is high.
“I fought in Donbas and — how to put it? — things are better organized here,” said Oleg Sapalenko, 27, a member of the 25th Airborne Brigade who secured a transfer to the Kraken unit so he could fight for his hometown among friends. “Teammates are way better team players, and that helps a lot.”
All Ukraine needs, Anton said, is for the world to supply the weaponry to push Russian forces back across the border, and soldiers like him will supply the spirit.
“We’re fighting an empire, not some villages in our country,” Anton said.
The Krakens have also been accused of mistreating Russian POWs, a potential war crime. Last month, Moscow put Nemichev on a wanted list, alleging that he was responsible for “an attempt on the life” of eight Russian soldiers, according to a report in Tass, the Russian news agency. A BBC investigation into a video showing several Russian POWs being deliberately shot in the legs found that the Kraken forces had been operating in the area at the time. Nemichev denied the allegations in the BBC account. He didn’t respond to calls and texts seeking comment for this report, but his unit’s press secretary provided a Telegram post from late March in which Nemichev dismissed the video as “fake news” and said his unit was “always very humane” with POWs.
By the time the Kraken unit liberated this suburban village of about 5,000 people at the end of April, many had fled. Maleev estimated Tuesday that only 200 or so remained in what amounted to a newly liberated ghost town. Few here even stepped outside as Ukrainian and Russian forces continued to trade mortar fire.
Much of the village has also been damaged or destroyed, including the Church of St. Nicholas, the village council building and a small hospital. Elsewhere, a tidy row of beehives stood in a field near houses whose heavy wooden roof beams had been snapped and charred. A massive crater lay not far from the gutted, ash-filled house where Maleev’s brother lived.
As in so many other places, Russian occupiers drank heavily and looted local homes and businesses, villagers said. Maleev’s mother, Claudia, 81, described how Russians even fed the local citizens meat they had stolen from a local processing plant when the conversation was interrupted by the sound of a Russian drone overhead.
“It’s buzzing,” Maleev said, hushing everyone. Russians often use drones to identify targets to attack. The sound is faint, like a gas-powered model airplane, but it was enough to cause members of the unit to break up the conversation and seek cover.
Ievgenia Sivorka contributed to this report.
16. THE WATCH THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD
A fascinating story. Watches have a unique place in military and intelligence operations.
Please go to the link for proper formatting and to view the many photos.
THE WATCH THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD
From half a world away, across almost seven decades, one man’s Rolex tells its story at last.
Words by Cole Pennington, Photographs by Tiffany Wade
It was barely recognizable as a watch when it first came to me. The case shape gave it away, but the dial and hands were hidden behind a rust-colored crystal. The caseback was deeply gouged with what looked like marks made by claws strong enough to scratch stainless steeI. You could tell it was a Rolex – its still bright gold bezel and crown, stamped “Rolex Oyster,” gave that much away, but that was about it. The truth is, it could have been made by anyone, and it wouldn’t have made any difference to its uncanny feel. With its heat-crazed crystal and dented case, the watch looked as if it had risen from the depths of hell – and as if it had come back from the afterlife with a story to tell.
The watch belongs to a man named Erik Kirzinger. It had been worn by his uncle, Norman Schwartz, who flew covert missions for the CIA during the Cold War. The watch bears the serial number 613482, dating it to approximately 1947.
When Kirzinger received the watch from the Central Identification Laboratory at Hickam Air Force Base, in Hawaii, he wanted to know at what time the hands had stopped, because the opaque crystal completely obscured the view. Deciphering when the hands had stopped might offer a small clue to the watch’s mysterious history. While reading the The New York Times, Kirzinger stumbled upon a name that those in the watch world will be familiar with: Eric Wind. Kirzinger contacted Wind, and Wind contacted HODINKEE. “When I first handled it, it gave me the chills,” Wind told us. Soon after, the watch arrived on my desk along with an official report from Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), letters written by CIA officers, a collection of medals, and a marble replica of a star that would appear on the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters.
My initial reaction was that something felt off. Sifting through memoranda written by senior intelligence officials seemed like something I should not have been doing. It was all very Hollywood, the story unfolding in the same way that an artifact that turned up out of nowhere might have thrust Dan Brown’s protagonist, Robert Langdon, into a deep web of dark secrets and shady organizations in The Da Vinci Code. The reality is that there are very real secrets every country keeps, but the story surrounding the watch happened to have been declassified in 1998. Anyone could look it up, but few people ever had. The intelligence community is dark and spooky by design. It’s hard to know who to trust when a watch turns up on your desk and sends you down a rabbit hole into shadowy corners of American history.
Provenance is a big business, especially when it comes to Rolex. But when it comes to this specific watch, it quickly became evident that none of that even mattered. Norman Schwartz, and the men he served with, volunteered to take on nearly impossible missions knowing that there would be no fame or glory should they be successful. The more time I spent reading primary sources and talking to Kirzinger, the more I realized that the watch wasn’t just an old Rolex – it was a key unlocking the door to a fascinating story.
In the early ’50s, the American consciousness was very much still shaped by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The still fresh memories of war, coupled with the fear brought on by the recently demonstrated nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union, made containing the spread of Communism seem very much a matter of life and death. America was publicly fighting a war in Korea against the Communist-backed North by supporting the capitalist South. In 2019, it’s easy to see which system proved more successful, but back then no one could predict the future any better than we can now. The public uncertainty over the threat of monolithic international Communism was very real, and it put immense pressure on the CIA to take every action it could to covertly frustrate the growth of nascent Communism in China. Putting all the pieces of the puzzle together took some time, but gradually, out of the murk of the past, the watch told its tale.
HODINKEE Magazine, Volume 5
$38
JILIN PROVINCE, CHINA
NOVEMBER 29, 1952
The time on pilot Norman Schwartz’s Rolex read just before midnight. He had slowed to just above stall speed, and was flying as low as possible over the pitch black forests of northern China, north of the Korean border at the Yalu River.
On board his C-47 were CIA officers John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau. Their mission that night: pick up Li Chun Ying, a CIA agent. The CIA was then recruiting agents from anti-Communist guerilla forces, and training them in the use of small arms, radio operations, and demolition, and then sending them into the field to sow as much mayhem as they could.
In the early ’50s, China didn’t have radar-controlled anti-aircraft weapons. This gave covert operations pilots like Schwartz a big advantage because, on a dark night, their planes were largely undetectable. Pilots like Schwartz were accustomed to performing reconnaissance overflights, in addition to dropping propaganda leaflets, using the darkness of night as cover, but this recovery operation was by no means a routine observation mission.
The C-47 was completely unmarked aside from the tail number, B813. This was a civilian plane. The tail number would identify it, to casual observers, as an everyday airplane, but everyone on board knew exactly who they were working for. Downey and Fecteau were on the CIA payroll, while Schwartz and co-pilot Robert Snoddy were hand-picked out of a crop of civilian pilots recruited to fly for the CIA. The pilots indeed had day jobs, ferrying cargo around Asia for Civil Air Transport (a civilian airline) but sometimes the cargo happened to be anti-Communist guerrilla units or nationalist agents. And you wouldn’t find the landing sites on any commercial aviation map.
The method for recovering the agent in question was not only difficult, but it was also dangerous. This was one of the first implementations of the so-called “All American Pick Up.” It was a technique that Downey and Fecteau had only recently trained for, and this was their first time trying it in the field. The agent on the ground would retrieve some dropped equipment: a harness, a pair of poles, and a length of line. He would then set up the poles, string the line between them, and attach the harness. The C-47 would then come in low and slow, trailing a grappling hook. The hook would snag the line, lifting the harnessed operative off the ground and into the air behind the airplane, where he’d be winched on board.
It sounds like something out of an improbable moment in a James Bond movie (in fact, Bond used the technique at the end of the 1965 film Thunderball), but it was effective. Incredibly, it worked so well that the CIA didn’t retire a finalized version of the technique (which used a balloon instead of the poles and line) until 1996.
The "All-American Pick Up" extraction method.
The mission plan called for three passes over the extraction site. On the first pass, the gear would be dropped. On the second, an observation would be made to ensure that the extraction was a go, and on the third pass, the plane would hook the pickup line. If all went well, Schwartz and Snoddy’s plane would get the job done and disappear into the night, with no one the wiser.
The pilots successfully deployed the gear into the extraction zone on the first pass. They were scheduled to make pass number two 40 minutes after the gear hit the ground, giving the agent time to set it up, and then give the signal that he was ready to be extracted by lighting bonfires in a particular pattern.
It was late November, and a blanket of snow had already covered the ground. The trees had shed their leaves, making it easy to spot the series of fires signaling a successful equipment set-up. It was on. Schwartz and Snoddy told the CIA officers in the back to get ready. On the third pass, they would pick up the operative. The full moon illuminated the blanketed forest below as Schwartz lined up to make the third and final pass. It was just before midnight. The C-47 was teetering on the edge of its stall speed of 58.2 knots as Schwartz brought the plane down to just above the treetops. Downey and Fecteau were acting as spotters in the rear of the aircraft.
Then the nighttime stillness was shattered. Machine-gun fire erupted out of the darkness, just as the plane was closing in on the pick-up point. Three .50 caliber machine guns sprayed a shower of rounds at the plane. Bullets tore through the fuselage, and one round punctured the oil tank on the port side of the plane; a number of rounds shredded the cockpit. The engines died. The mission had been somehow compromised; ambushed, the powerless aircraft fell earthward.
The C-47 hit the ground about 50 yards from the site of the ambush, already ablaze. Even if they somehow survived the crash landing, the pilots were trapped in the cockpit, fire blocking their only exit. The plane slid to a stop, minus one wing; Downey jumped out of the wreckage and ran to the nose of the plane. He banged on the door, shouting the pilots’ names. Nothing. The only reply was the crack and sizzle of a cockpit being consumed by burning fuel.
Schwartz and Snoddy didn’t make it, but somehow the officers in the back did. In a letter dated 2003, Fecteau said he was “thrown the length of the plane, and it put a bump on my forehead you could hang your coat on.” He recalled the ambush taking place at the exact moment they were supposed to “hook up” and extract the agent.
The Americans had walked right into a trap. Their agent on the ground had been captured and ordered to radio in for the extraction. The ambush had been carefully planned; the guns that took down the C-47 were camouflaged under white tarps, making them invisible against the snow. The troops on the ground had known exactly when the flight was due, and knew exactly when to attack. Downey and Fecteau were captured and brought to a local jail, before being sent to Beijing. They would then spend years as prisoners, subjected to almost daily interrogation. Though it seems a perfect propaganda opportunity, in fact, for two years it was entirely unknown to the U.S. government what had happened that fateful night – until Downey and Fecteau were put on trial.
John T. Downey after being released from a Chinese prison. (United Press International)
The Chinese government invited media to attend; Downey was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Fecteau, to 20 years. Since Downey had gone to Yale, it was assumed that he was the leader. The trial was the first time anyone had heard of what happened, and it also let the U.S. government know that the officers were still alive. Six American presidents came and went from office before Henry Kissinger negotiated the release of the two captive CIA officers, just ahead of Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China. But at the trial, nothing was said of the fate of the two pilots. The local villagers had been ordered by the Chinese army to bury what little was left of them, a few hundred yards from the crash site, that same night, under the snow in the frozen earth.
CIA HEADQUARTERS,
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
On the north side of the lobby at CIA headquarters is a wall made of white Alabama marble – a memorial to those who have fallen in the line of duty. There are 133 stars carved into the wall. Above them is the inscription: “In Honor of Those Members of the Central Intelligence Agency Who Gave Their Lives in the Service of Their Country.” While many of the identities of the fallen are still classified, it is known that one of those stars memorializes Norman Schwartz. Another belongs to his co-pilot, Robert Snoddy.
When stars for the two pilots were added to the wall in 1998, a small collection of personal effects was on display. It included Schwartz’s medals from World War II and a two-tone Rolex Oyster Datejust dating to the late ’40s. That same watch was on his wrist that fateful night in 1952.
Capt. Norman Schwartz stands in front of a Civil Air Transport C-46.
According to Erik Kirzinger’s recollection of conversations with his mother, who was Schwartz’s sister, Norman Schwartz never intended to fly covert missions for the CIA. He’d been a fighter pilot, flying direct air support sorties out of mainland China in the powerful Corsair, for the Marine Corps’ air arm during World War II. The kind of daring flying he was accustomed to was very different from the monotonous routine of his cargo transport job flying C-47s around Asia.
The transition from fast, nimble, single-engine fighter planes to lumbering, multi-engine cargo aircraft was tough for some pilots, but for Schwartz, it was his ticket to staying in the Far East. He was a thrill seeker; he enjoyed life in post-war China. The power of the American dollar afforded him a comparatively lavish lifestyle, and the challenge of flying in new environments kept life interesting.
As a Marine Corps pilot, Schwartz flew the F4U Corsair in the pacific theater during World War II.
He signed on with an outfit called Civil Air Transport (CAT), which began as an American-sponsored relief effort in 1946, but which after the defeat of the Nationalist forces in 1949, was taken over by the CIA. On top of relief efforts, CAT operated routine flights in the region as well as cargo transport. The airline was set up by Americans Claire Chennault and Whiting Willauer; Chennault is best known for commanding the “Flying Tigers,” a volunteer squadron of American pilots who flew fighters wearing the Chinese colors, but carried out American-led bombing missions against Japan.
When, in 1952, Schwartz’s parents received the news that he had perished flying a cargo route from Seoul to Tokyo, they couldn’t believe it. It was difficult to imagine that a combat pilot who survived World War II would meet his fate over the Sea of Japan on a routine flight, ferrying supplies during peacetime.
His remains were never recovered. According to officials from Civil Air Transport, the plane he was flying was involved in some sort of accident – it was assumed the wreckage, along with the pilots, was sitting on the bottom of the Sea of Japan. A perfunctory rescue and recovery mission was carried out, which, of course, came up empty-handed. Schwartz and Snoddy were gone, and their secret mission and passengers had vanished respectively into history – and a Chinese prison.
Norman Schwartz's watch on his wrist (right).
At first, the CIA didn’t know what had become of the crew, but they knew immediately that the C-47 never made it home. As soon as it became clear that the mission had been compromised, the agency ordered oil barrels to be dropped in the Pacific, to create oil slicks that would trick the rescue and recovery search crews into thinking the plane had plunged into the sea.
The official story was that Schwartz was a former Marine aviator turned civilian pilot. Unofficially, he was contracted by the CIA to carry out covert missions on behalf of the agency on top of his normal flying duties. At no point was he ever a CIA officer; pilots were typically contracted instead. There’s a pecking order within the CIA, and officers were at the top. Contractors traditionally did not enjoy the same privileges as CIA employees. The government held the position that the pilots were unequivocally “civilian employees.” This meant neither they, nor their families, qualified for any sort of recognition from the U.S. Government, or the CIA.
Medals awarded to Norman Schwartz.
GREENSBORO,
NORTH CAROLINA, 1998
In 1998, Norman Schwartz’s sister, Betty Kirzinger, asked her son, Erik, to make sure that her brother was buried in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. She had been writing the government for decades to try to find out the truth about what had happened to her brother. She contacted the White House, the CIA, and various embassies, but didn’t get anywhere. She passed away in 2004.
Erik Kirzinger was flipping through television channels one night when he saw a Chinese official delivering a speech on C-SPAN. On impulse, he took down his name and wrote him a letter. If the U.S. government wasn’t budging, then why not try from the Chinese side? Not long after, the phone rang. It was the Chinese diplomat, Li Zhaoxing, inviting Kirzinger to Washington, D.C., to chat.
Li looked into the incident and managed to locate the villagers who had actually buried Schwartz and Snoddy. They said that they initially buried both pilots next to the ambush site, but then they reburied the remains nearby. Kirzinger had spoken with Downey a number of times, but that was only half the story. Slowly, all the pieces were coming together. Schwartz and Snoddy’s supervisor at CAT, Robert Rousselot, had been given direct orders not to speak with the relatives of the fallen. He did so anyway, feeling he had a moral obligation to let Schwartz’s parents know what had happened.
Richard G. Fecteau at Valley Forge Army Hospital. (Associated Press)
At this point, everything that the Kirzingers knew about the incident had been cobbled together from bits of hearsay. A clearer picture was forming, but the U.S. had not performed an official investigation aside from a classified debriefing in the ’70s with Fecteau and Downey after their release. There were no plans in place to bring the pilots’ remains home. Since they were not CIA employees, merely “civilian contractors,” the CIA did not officially recognize their roles.
Erik Kirzinger didn’t settle for that explanation. He wanted to bring Schwartz home and bury him during his mother’s lifetime. His uncle had perished in secret, but he’d served his country, and even though he assumed the same risks as the CIA officers who had been his passengers, and paid the ultimate price, he was not immediately recognized.
But that all changed under the order of the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet. Stars for Schwartz and Snoddy were added to the CIA Memorial Wall. The CIA states that “Inclusion on the Memorial Wall is awarded posthumously to employees who lose their lives while serving their country in the field of intelligence.” It was a rare exception that contractors were given the same treatment as official employees of the CIA, but both men had certainly made the sacrifices necessary for qualification.
The Distinguished Intelligence Cross was awarded posthumously to Norman Schwartz.
Kirzinger’s persistence paid off. In 2002, an official investigation was launched. A joint team of members from the U.S. and China went to Jilin province to interview the villager who had initially buried Schwartz and Snoddy, in hopes of recovering remains that could be brought back to American soil. Nothing was recovered on this visit, but a follow-up investigation was launched in 2004, and it came to light that the remains of Schwartz and Snoddy may have been reburied in another location because the area was being landscaped for farming. The crash site was excavated. There wasn’t much. There were bits of what remained of the airplane. The searchers found possible human remains, along with some personal effects – a boot, a Parker mechanical pencil.
A serial number stamped on a hose clamp served as a terminus post quem of January 1950. This was the plane. Among the personal effects was a Rolex Oyster Datejust watch. The lot was sent to Hawaii on July 9, 2004. For 52 years – 1952 to 2004 – the Rolex had been underground, as forgotten as the man who’d worn it on the last night of his life. Now, it had begun its journey home.
The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Central Identification Laboratory at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii produced some dry facts. The watch measured 43.6mm x 38.5mm x 15.3mm and weighed 49.3 grams. Both spring bars were still affixed when the watch was found, suggesting that the leather strap that must have been attached to it had disintegrated. The crown was stamped with “ROLEX OYSTER” and the usual Swiss cross. The crystal was no longer clear – instead it had turned a deep reddish-brown – “corrosion products” was the report’s clinical observation. The movement had seized from rust, and the hands were almost completely obscured, but under a very bright light, their ghostly outline is still visible – frozen somewhere around midnight. The watch most likely stopped shortly after the ambush.
Erik Kirzinger wanted to bring Schwartz home and bury him during his mother’s lifetime. While this was ultimately not possible, Schwartz was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Cross posthumously; the sacrifice he made was etched in stone, but his body was never recovered. All that’s left is his old watch, which Kirzinger finally received in 2019 after it sat on a shelf in the Hawaii Central Identification Lab for 15 years. Officials decided the watch should be passed on to Erik Kirzinger after a decades-long process.
Through his old watch, Schwartz finally made it home.
17. Exercise Baltic Operations kicks off in the Baltic Sea
Exercise Baltic Operations kicks off in the Baltic Sea
By U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO Public Affairs
STOCKHOLM –
Fourteen NATO allies, two NATO partner nations, over 45 ships, more than 75 aircraft, and approximately 7,000 personnel kick off Baltic Operations (BALTOPS 22) from Stockholm today.
This premier maritime-focused annual exercise in the Baltic Region takes place June 5-17 and provides a unique training opportunity to strengthen combined response capabilities critical to preserving freedom of navigation and security in the Baltic Sea. This is the 51st iteration of the exercise series that began in 1972.
"In past iterations of BALTOPS we've talked about meeting the challenges of tomorrow," said Vice Adm. Gene Black, commander Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO) and U.S. Sixth Fleet. "Those challenges are upon us - in the here and now. BALTOPS 22 highlights our past investments and shows our collective partnership and capabilities as we recognize the importance of 'freedom of the seas' and the vital role the Baltic plays in European prosperity."
Participating nations include Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries will exercise a myriad of capabilities demonstrating the inherent flexibility of maritime forces. Exercise scenarios include amphibious operations, gunnery, anti-submarine, air defense, mine clearance operations, explosive ordnance disposal, unmanned underwater vehicles, and medical response.
The exercise is led by U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Sixth Fleet, command and controlled by STRIKFORNATO. Royal British Navy Rear Adm. James Morley, STRIKFORNATO deputy commander, will command the exercise control group.
“BALTOPS is a fabulous opportunity for allied and partner nations to train together at sea, in the air and on the ground – improving interoperability and experience working together.” said Morley. “It also serves to assure those in the region that NATO is ready to defend itself.”
Unique to BALTOPS 22 is Sweden’s celebration of their Navy’s 500th anniversary coinciding with the exercise. BALTOPS 22 also features more robust medical response scenarios, specifically during personnel recovery training aboard a submarine. New to this year’s iteration is the incorporation of chaplaincy response, featuring five participating nation chaplains. The exercise also builds on previous iterations by enhancing the incorporation of the space domain through the NATO Space Center.
Enhanced COVID prevention measures affords participants the ability to have more interaction than the previous two years, while ensuring crews remain healthy and ready to provide continuous regional security.
For over 80 years, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-U.S. Naval Forces Africa (NAVEUR-NAVAF) has forged strategic relationships with our allies and partners, leveraging a foundation of shared values to preserve security and stability.
Headquartered in Naples, Italy, NAVEUR-NAVAF operates U.S. naval forces in the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM) areas of responsibility. U.S. Sixth Fleet is permanently assigned to NAVEUR-NAVAF, and employs maritime forces through the full spectrum of joint and naval operations.
STRIKFORNATO, headquartered in Oeiras, Portugal, is Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) premier, rapidly deployable and flexible, maritime power projection Headquarters, capable of planning and executing full spectrum joint maritime operations.
18. At Raleigh event, Fort Bragg official outlines renewable energy efforts
Special Operations Forces and Fort Bragg are going green.
At Raleigh event, Fort Bragg official outlines renewable energy efforts
A video screen grab shows an aerial view of the Fort Stewart solar farm on Dec. 6, 2016. Fort Bragg’s energy and utilities branch chief said Wednesday, June 1, 2022, that the base plans to hold a ribbon cutting ceremony for a 1.1-megawatt solar farm floating on top of a lake on Camp Mackall, a Special Forces training site. (Brian Fickel/U.S. Army)
(Tribune News Service) — The largest floating solar farm in the Southeast is just one of several steps Fort Bragg has planned to increase the sprawling army facility’s use of renewable energy, an Army official said Wednesday.
Audrey Oxendine, the chief of Fort Bragg’s energy and utilities branch, said the base plans to hold a ribbon cutting next week for the 1.1-megawatt solar farm that is floating on top of Camp Mackall’s Big Muddy Lake. Camp Mackall is a Special Forces training site.
“Usually you don’t mix electricity and water,” Oxendine said, but the two-acre floating solar farm provides electricity while also not sacrificing valuable training grounds.
Speaking at an event hosted in downtown Raleigh by environmental business organization E2, Oxendine said Fort Bragg’s next steps include a microgrid at Camp Mackall, 67 electric vehicles, and exploring placing solar panels on top of parking lots across the roughly 250-square-mile base.
Bob Keefe, E2’s executive director, said the military is likely the largest market-maker in the nation’s economy, a massive purchaser whose needs can spur research and development that has ramifications for everyone.
Keefe asked the audience to think about “what would happen if the biggest user of energy and fuel in the world, aka the U.S. military, were to shift to cleaner sources.”
That’s exactly what the U.S. Department of Defense is trying to accomplish, targeting 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030.
The DoD is trying to curb the effects of climate change — 2018’s Hurricane Florence caused $3.6 billion in damage at the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejuene. But the military also believes that adding renewable energy is important to maintaining mission readiness and reducing costs.
Fort Bragg’s electricity bill alone is about $40 million a year.
“We’re constantly looking to try to reduce that and to be able to have renewable energy,” Oxendine said.
Fort Bragg’s peak demand is about 132 megawatts, and while the floating array is promising, Oxendine said, “We don’t have enough lakes on Fort Bragg to get there.”
The solar canopies that Bragg is considering would allow the base to add panels on top of land that has already been cleared, meaning Army officials wouldn’t have to worry about sacrificing additional training ground or threaten the red-cockaded woodpeckers that are found around the base.
Duke Energy won the contract to build the solar panel project, with Ameresco acting as a primary contractor. Ameresco officials estimated it would save Fort Bragg about $2 million annually, cutting electricity use by 7% and water use by 20%.
Duke is challenging a New York-based developer’s proposal to build solar panels to provide energy at Fort Bragg’s on-base housing, arguing that the land is within Duke’s service area. The developer, Sunstone Energy Development, says Fort Bragg is a federal enclave and not subject to North Carolina’s regulated utility service areas.
In addition to the solar array, the Camp Mackall project includes two megawatts of battery storage that can be used when there are local power outages, as well as energy efficiency upgrades.
Having the on-site electricity generation is important, Oxendine said, because there is one electricity feeder line that runs to Camp Mackall. If something were to go wrong with that line, Oxendine warned, it could impact the training of Green Berets.
“These classes are scheduled years in advance,” Oxendine said, “and if we cancel them, then that opportunity for that soldier is gone.”
Greg Gebhardt, a Duke Energy strategic account manager, stressed that interest in renewables is not limited to the military. Gebhardt, a u.S. Army veteran who served on Fort Bragg, is a former Republican candidate for lieutenant governor.
In his role at Duke, Gebhardt works with Fortune 50 companies, many of whom, he said, have a growing interest in renewable energy. Recently, he added, a company approached him to ask about a microgrid that could provide power in the event of an outage.
“Down time is lost money,” Gebhardt said, “and in today’s day and age where everyone’s looking to cut costs to save money, it’s very important to them.”
This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
©2022 The Charlotte Observer.
19. China’s spies are not always as good as advertised
But this does mean we can become complacent. The incompetent ones are a distraction and we expend great effort on and congratulate ourselves for arresting the inept ones. Are they giving us the targets to focus on? All warfare is based on deception. it is not the ones we catch. It is those who practice good tradecraft and continue to operate that we must focus on.
China’s spies are not always as good as advertised
In recent years Western officials have maintained a steady drumbeat of warnings about Chinese spies. In short, the spooks are getting bolder and better. Among other things, they’re accused of hacking into Microsoft’s Exchange email service, stealing Western defence and commercial secrets, harassing Chinese dissidents overseas and bugging the headquarters of the African Union (all of which China denies). Yet, when confronted by overwhelming evidence that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, China’s spies appear to have dropped the ball.
Whatever Vladimir Putin told Xi Jinping when the two presidents met in Beijing on February 4th, China did not seem prepared for Russia’s invasion three weeks later. One giveaway was its failure to make plans to evacuate its citizens in Ukraine. China’s embassy first advised them to stay at home or fix a Chinese flag “on an obvious place on your car”. If Chinese officials had in mind “Wolf Warrior 2”, a nationalistic film in which the hero passes the frontlines of an African conflict by raising a Chinese flag, they were disappointed. China’s parroting of Russian propaganda has not made it popular in Ukraine. Two days later the embassy retracted its advice, warning citizens: “Don’t show your identity or display identifying symbols.”
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, Chinese diplomats squirmed as their government struggled to formulate a coherent position. China seemed surprised, too, at Ukrainian resistance to Russia and at Western support for Ukraine. In the days after the invasion, Chinese officials quizzed foreign counterparts about the situation on the ground. Before the war, a foreign diplomat in Beijing recalls Chinese interlocutors confessing that they had limited understanding of central and eastern Europe, but were fortunate to have the Russians to explain it for them.
Of course, other countries failed to anticipate the invasion, too. Perhaps Mr Putin did forewarn Mr Xi and convince him it would be done in days. But given China’s reputed capabilities, its lack of contingency planning and situational awareness suggest a serious intelligence failure. The heartening conclusion for many Western governments is that China’s spies are not always as good as advertised.
Keeping America busy
China has indeed expanded its espionage activities and capabilities in recent years, say intelligence officials. Much of that has focused on stealing technology in industries it seeks to dominate, such as robotics, aerospace and biopharma. Chris Wray, the director of the fbi, said in January that his agents open a China-related counter-intelligence case roughly every 12 hours. China’s cyber-espionage activities are especially brazen, outstripping those of all other countries combined, he said. In 2020-21 China’s cyber-spies “demonstrated a higher tolerance for risk” than before, reported Mandiant, a cyber-security firm.
China has got better at human intelligence, too. Some American officials blame a Chinese mole—as well as a compromised communication system—for the jailing or execution of many cia sources in China between 2010 and 2012. China’s spies have moved beyond the ethnic-Chinese sources they used to rely on, often using stolen data to identify those with vulnerabilities, and making approaches via LinkedIn and other social media. China has also escalated efforts to secure political influence in democracies, often by offering funding or perks to politicians, although that’s usually done through a Communist Party branch called the United Front Work Department, rather than its spy agencies.
Still, when it comes to snooping on foreign governments, China’s global interests have expanded so rapidly in the past three decades that its intelligence agencies seem to have struggled to identify clear priorities for what information to seek and where. “Even if you pull down every single piece of data in the Kremlin and Putin’s dachas, you still have to sort through it all to figure out what it is that you actually want to know about,” says Peter Mattis, a former cia analyst who is now at the Special Competitive Studies Project, an ngo in Virginia. “If you’re searching through massive data, your results are only as good as your queries.” China’s focus on defence and commercial tech often comes at the expense of insight into decision-making in foreign capitals, say other experts.
Another area where China could improve is analysis, which is hobbled by a political culture that offers few incentives to take initiative or challenge orthodoxy. Junior and mid-ranking Chinese intelligence officers lack sufficient status to make potentially risky calls when interpreting raw information. Those are usually made by officials at the vice-ministerial level or above. And even they may not pass on assessments that conflict with Mr Xi’s wishes or worldview. “Rather as with the kgb, the difficulty has been in telling truth to power,” says Nigel Inkster, a China specialist and former deputy chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. One consequence is that Chinese spies, unlike most Western counterparts, often ask sources for written analysis that can be passed up the chain but is ultimately attributable to the source, not the handler.
A related problem is that Chinese spies, while targeting high-value assets, have a tendency to recruit peripheral figures—often retired foreign officials or academics—and to do so within China. They don’t do as well getting at difficult targets, says Nicholas Eftimiades, a former American intelligence official. To understand the situation in Ukraine, “they would need to get someone in the Polish government or the Polish military, or the Ukrainian military, who could report out what’s going on” in more-or-less real time, he says.
Running such assets also requires tradecraft, another long-running Chinese weakness (though it is now improving). In a study of 595 documented cases of Chinese espionage, mostly since 2000, Mr Eftimiades found that in 218 of them the organisations and individuals involved used little or no tradecraft or did not make any significant attempts to hide their activity. Last year China suffered an embarrassment when Afghanistan expelled about a dozen suspected Chinese spies.
Spying on Russia presents China with particular challenges. Despite some recent success recruiting Russian sources, China probably has less insight into the Kremlin’s thinking than do Western countries, which spent decades spying on the Soviets. China fell out with the Soviets, too, in the late 1950s, but lacked resources for serious espionage. Since the end of the cold war Russia has attracted far more Western investors than Chinese ones. And Western countries, unlike China, are home to many politically connected Russians.
Such obstacles might be reassuring to some who are worried about China’s rise. But they also point to a more sobering conclusion: Mr Xi appears to be making enormously consequential decisions based on dodgy intelligence. It is unclear whether the root cause is the information itself, the analysis applied or how it is communicated to China’s leaders. In any case, the outcome could be deadly miscalculation.
Imagine a confrontation over Taiwan, the democratic island that China claims as its own—and threatens to recapture by force. Chinese spies have multiple sources there, but they skew towards pro-unification types, rather than those now in power. If Mr Xi were to consider military action, he would need his intelligence agencies to gauge at what point America might intervene. China’s spies direct many more resources to America than to Russia, and have better access to people who inform government decisions there. Even so, they might struggle to predict American moves in a crisis. And even if they get it right, the question remains: would they share a view that conflicts with Mr Xi’s? ■
20. Op-Ed: Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to films like 'Top Gun'?
Op-Ed: Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to films like 'Top Gun'?
As this country commemorates Memorial Day, many will head to theaters to bathe in the nostalgia of “Top Gun: Maverick,” which opened Friday. With Tom Cruise on screen, the multiplex will crack with high-fives and roar with F-18 fighter jets, those sleek emblems of American power.
The film’s F-18s and other military gear are courtesy of the Pentagon. This is the job of the U.S. Defense Department’s Entertainment Media Office, which allows use of such assets in exchange for control of the script. Each military branch — except for the Marine Corps, which operates out of Camp Pendleton in San Diego County — maintains satellite offices along Wilshire Boulevard to do outreach with the entertainment industry. The original 1986 “Top Gun,” which was intimately guided by the Navy, has long represented the military’s capabilities when it comes to steering pop culture.
Until recently, the scholarly consensus had been that this phenomenon was isolated to perhaps a couple of hundred films. In the past five years, however, my small group of researchers has acquired 30,000 pages of internal Defense Department documents through Freedom of Information Act requests and newly available archives at Georgetown University, which show that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have exercised direct editorial control over more than 2,500 films and television shows. These discoveries raise questions about the government’s reach at a time when deciphering propaganda from fact has become increasingly difficult.
This includes a history of excising unsavory or controversial topics — or “showstoppers” as they’re often called in the documents — including depictions of war crimes, torture, security of the nuclear arsenal, veteran suicide, sexual assault and racism in the ranks. At the same time, these institutions have used their clout to promote weapons, gin up recruiting and normalize U.S. military action around the world.
We have also discovered dozens of instances where films, denied U.S. government assistance because of objectionable content, were ultimately never made. Jerry Bruckheimer, a top producer, said that “Top Gun” and 2001’s “Pearl Harbor” simply wouldn’t exist without military approval. Mace Neufeld, who produced virtually the entire Jack Ryan film franchise, also needed Pentagon and CIA support. Neufeld has acknowledged that Paramount Pictures would greenlight the first film in the series, 1990’s “The Hunt for Red October,” only if it secured Defense Department approval first. It was even in the contract. One can imagine the chilling effect this has on screenwriters.
“Top Gun,” also a Paramount product, came out post-Vietnam, at a time of public reticence about military adventurism. The movie became a military-supported public relations blitz that supercharged recruiting. As we found in our research, the Pentagon’s Entertainment Media Office internally wrote that the film “completed rehabilitation of the military’s image, which had been savaged by the Vietnam War.”
The film later caused trouble for the military, though, during the 1991 Tailhook scandal, in which hundreds of Navy servicemen sexually assaulted more than 80 servicewomen at a convention in Las Vegas. When Congress investigated, it called out “Top Gun” for fostering an assault-prone environment.
Now, more than three decades later, memories of Tailhook and other sexual assault controversies have faded with the help of the Entertainment Media Office’s red pen, no less. That has allowed the Navy to dust off the franchise. According to documents obtained by our research team member Tom Secker, the military began meeting with Bruckheimer, the producer, about the reboot as far back as 2012. In 2018, Entertainment Media Office personnel found “no major problems with the storyline,” but asked for “some revision to characterization and actions of Naval aviators.” Later that year, the “Production Assistance Agreement” formally stipulated the Pentagon’s right to “weave in key talking points” in exchange for all that expensive equipment.
What exact changes did the Pentagon make to the new “Top Gun: Maverick”? We don’t know, and that’s part of the problem. While we have script change details for hundreds of other productions, such as “Godzilla” and “Fast and Furious 8,” the military has repeatedly invoked a “trade secrets” exception to block our Freedom of Information Act requests when it comes to its most high-value assets.
Americans should have a right to know the extent of the military’s influence on the shows and films they consume. One solution would be to require that all script negotiations automatically be made public. Barring that, Congress could pass legislation that requires producers to disclose CIA or Department of Defense influence before the opening credits. Such a notice would alert moviegoers that they were about to experience a “two-hour infomercial” as the Pentagon proudly called “Lone Survivor,” a 2013 film about four Navy SEALs in Afghanistan, in one of the internal memos we obtained.
The entertainment industry can play a role too. Although producers and directors have largely benefited financially over the years from these arrangements, they should fight for creative integrity and refuse to give up control of their scripts. With rising audience awareness of this issue, turning a movie into a propaganda poster may no longer be the blockbuster brand strategy it once was. In fact, successful evasion of military influence might well be viewed as a badge of honor.
If we’re to truly honor the ideals veterans fought and died for, we shouldn’t allow the military to wage a stealth propaganda campaign on an unsuspecting public by commandeering the world’s largest entertainment industry.
21. The dirty little secret on how congressional staff thrive in the always-on world of modern politics is doing moonlight work like 80-hour weeks, including unpaid Saturdays and Sundays
I would adapt the lyrics of the Rolling Stones song, "Salt of the Earth," for the congressional staffer:
Along with the common foot soldier, say a prayer for the congressional staff (and for congressional staffers who are doing the nation's work please remember that common foot soldier who is also doing the nation's work - everyone has to sacrifice to make contributions).
Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier (or the congressional staffer)
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
The dirty little secret on how congressional staff thrive in the always-on world of modern politics is doing moonlight work like 80-hour weeks, including unpaid Saturdays and Sundays
IStock; RapidEye/Getty Images; Marianne Ayala/Insider
- Many Capitol Hill staffers are working double duty on their boss' campaigns.
- Some welcome the opportunity to earn more money.
- But others are burnt out and feel pressured to do it, sometimes without pay.
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When a young man began a job as communications director for a Democratic member of the US House a couple of years back, he heeded advice from a friend who'd been there before: Don't moonlight for your boss' campaign without demanding more pay.
Some federal politicians, it turns out, like their campaign workers to work for free whenever possible.
So when his manager approached him about helping out with the 2020 election cycle, he said he "lucked out."
The communications director earned an extra $15,000 while working for the campaign. Some tasks included connecting with local reporters and coordinating messaging with partner political outfits such as EMILY's List and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Other congressional staffers aren't so fortunate. Some don't get paid at all for their campaign work. Their performance in taxpayer-funded day jobs stands to suffer, critics of the practice fear.
And there's no master list — public or otherwise — for tracking which congressional staffers also work on political campaigns, which are generally funded by private donors and special-interest groups and prioritize winning over other considerations, such as serving constituents.
All the while, this election-year tradition of toil and tumult is hurtling headlong into shifting work standards and expectations, particularly among younger congressional staffers and political operatives who've pushed for union representation and grown accustomed to pandemic-era accommodations such as working from home.
When it came to getting paid for both his congressional and campaign work, the former communications director said he believed he was "in the minority" of House staffers. Insider interviews with more than a dozen current and former staffers revealed that the practice of working on both campaigns and on Capitol Hill was widespread.
"People think, 'If I'm loyal and work really hard then they'll reward me for it.' But they won't," he said. "They care about one thing — and one thing only — and it's reelection."
A view of the US Capitol at sunset on January 5, 2022, in Washington, DC.
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Asking a lot
As the 2022 midterm-election campaigns hit their stride, staff described the highs and lows of working on campaigns to Insider.
Most of those who agreed to be interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the management that required them to do this work.
All of the staffers interviewed shared their identities and the names of their bosses with Insider, but asked the names be withheld from this story.
"Did I feel like I was working two jobs when we were in it?" a seasoned Democratic staffer said of the demands they felt while juggling their day job, campaign duties, and shadow of a personal life. "One hundred percent."
But that's to be expected, Insider has learned, if one wants to thrive in the always-on world of modern politics.
Working 80-hour weeks, filling multiple roles, and adhering to far-from-black-and-white ethics rules are just a few of the challenges Capitol Hill staffers must overcome when the boss' campaign needs help.
Some staffers told Insider they valued the opportunity to help out on campaigns and boost their salaries by doing work in a field relevant to their day jobs. But others faced significant struggles.
One former Democratic House scheduler said she had to work most weekends on congressional duties to make up for the 20 hours a week she spent helping her boss hit up donors for money during the 2014 election cycle. The job of scheduler involves maintaining a member of Congress' official schedule and itineraries, reviewing invitations, and making reservations for travel, among other tasks.
Sometimes she joined her boss at political fundraisers, where she would carry her bag, help her identify donors and supporters whose names the Democratic lawmaker couldn't remember, and collect business cards to follow up on constituents' questions.
The scheduler didn't get a pay increase for the extra work. Instead, the source of her $35,000-a-year salary changed, with a portion coming from campaign funds instead of taxpayer dollars. That helped her boss' official congressional office save money it could then spend elsewhere, but it did nothing to help her own financial situation.
"I was happy to do it at the time and I was passionate about the job and the work, and I was young enough to have the energy to do it, but it was definitely a lot," she said. "The job was just my entire life. It was an extraordinary amount of work for so little pay."
Another former Democratic House communications director told Insider he had to spend $200 of his own money to take an Amtrak train to the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia after the chief of staff demanded he and three other staffers attend in support of their boss' reelection effort.
"There was a lot of venting on the train ride up about how this was being framed as essentially a command and we didn't think it was appropriate," the man, who also wrote his boss' debate talking points and editorial campaign materials without being paid for the work, told Insider.
In retrospect, he said, "this jumps out to me as something that I would never in a million years put up with now."
Congressional staffers outside a Senate Republican luncheon at the US Capitol building.
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
A reexamination of work
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers across the United States have been rethinking their careers and what's expected of them. Workers in many sectors have demanded and often obtained better pay, increased work-from-home flexibility, and more manageable hours.
Left largely unspoken in these debates — until now — is the campaign double shift.
But when Insider reporters started asking about it, they found major discrepancies in practice from office to office.
One Democratic aide, who requested anonymity in order to speak frankly about past campaign work, said congressional staffers, in particular, have become accustomed to being on call 24 hours a day.
In 2022, congressional staffers grapple with a never-ending avalanche of panicky Slack messages, text messages, Zoom calls, and last-minute virtual-meeting invites — on top of their various other duties. Such a congressional workplace would have been unimaginable even a decade ago, when hip-holstered BlackBerrys still ruled Capitol Hill corridors.
Yet one staffer lamented that labor rules "haven't really caught up" with the realities of a contemporary congressional workplace.
One former congressional aide, who requested anonymity because they routinely advise members and campaign staff about ethical issues, described the current state of affairs on campaign-staff pay to Insider as "somewhat murky."
In the House in particular, this person likened individual congressional offices, for the most part, to a collection of "poorly run small businesses."
"They're all sort of doing their own thing," the attorney said. "They have some sort of quality control. But in the end, it's really up to each member and their chief of staff to sort of decide what the rules are."
Capitol Hill staffers help themselves to pizza outside a caucus meeting.
Double dipping raises ethics concerns
The practice of working a congressional office job while also taking on campaign side gigs has bedeviled ethics watchdogs for ages.
They worry that taxpaying constituents aren't getting the most from representatives' offices when their staffers' time and attention gets split between public service and political pugilism.
Even though federal ethics rules dictate the jobs remain separate, good government experts say the rules are cumbersome, with dividing lines easily blurred — particularly when many people continue working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For example, one of the rules says a congressional staffer working in a congressional office must step outside the office to do campaign work. If a campaign-related assignment comes in, they must leave their Capitol Hill office to complete it.
Under ethics rules, calls cannot come to staffers' official work phones but must go to personal devices or phones provided by the campaign.
Some staff leave their offices on Capitol Hill in Washington DC to walk to a coffee shop. Others go to the nearby Republican or Democratic Party headquarters to work, hopeful that the commute won't be cold or rainy. One former staffer told Insider that during the 2020 election cycle, he would sit at home and have both official and campaign computers open given that everyone was working remotely to avoid COVID-19.
"Most offices are probably not in full compliance with the exact letter of law. That means each office probably operates in a gray area," the former Democratic communications staffer who worked during the 2016 cycle said.
"It's not crossing the line, but that's because the line is ridiculously drawn," said Meredith McGehee, the former executive director for the nonpartisan government ethics organization Issue One. "Where else in the world can you say, 'For the next five minutes, I'm not on my job, I'm on personal time.'"
Another gray area: salaries
First, a little math.
During 2022, senior Capitol Hill staffers with salaries of $135,468 a year or more are not allowed, under House and Senate rules, to get paid more than $29,895 for a second job, including campaign work. The exact salary rules change from year to year.
One way staffers could get around the limits: Reduce their official pay, ever so slightly, in order to better cash in on campaign work.
But determining the extent to which congressional staffers do this is nearly impossible for the public.
The secretive House and Senate Ethics Committees may investigate such matters, but they rarely punish their own.
Specifically for the US House, there's the independent, nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics. But this office has no law-enforcement authority on its own, and any recommendation it makes to the House Committee on Ethics might be heeded — or ignored. The Office of Congressional Ethics also keeps its investigations private until after its leaders conclude there's reason to believe a legal or ethical violation occurred.
Jan Baran, a partner at the Holtzman Vogel law firm and former general counsel for the Republican National Committee, said abiding by the income thresholds and keeping payroll straight should be top priorities for those who venture into campaigns.
"You can't get away with stuff like this very long if you're ignoring the rules or ignorant of those rules," he said, adding that the advent of the "forever campaign," taxing as it might be, has greatly benefited official Washington.
"It's provided all kinds of work for accountants and lawyers in DC," Baran said of the staffing sea change he's witnessed since the Gerald Ford administration.
Staffers and members of the media wait outside a Senate Democrats luncheon for lawmakers to emerge.
The experiences of working on a campaign vary widely
Now that the former Democratic House communications director works full time on the campaign trail in a red-leaning state, he thinks his former approach of juggling two jobs is bad politics.
Too often, he said, congressional staff helping with campaigns lean on congressional leaders' national talking points such as "Putin's price hike" to talk about gas prices in a way that he now sees doesn't always resonate in certain parts of the US.
Instead, he said, leaders should invest in full-time, on-the-ground staff to build up the party's infrastructure.
"What members should be doing is investing in the next generation of talent within their states," he said, "not flying people out."
Not everyone agrees that the practice of juggling campaigns with official duties should be reexamined. After all, congressional staffers know their boss' policy positions and the needs of their constituents.
One former congressional Democratic staffer said the senator she worked for never asked her to do campaign work but that she was "thrilled" when she moved to the House side and was invited to attend fundraisers after work. It was an opportunity to get more face time with senior staff in a still professional yet more laid-back environment that she called "a perk, not a punishment."
"I was a staff assistant, so I was happy to get a free glass of wine and spend time out of the office with senior staff," she said. "If you're someone who wants to leave the Hill, you can hobnob with leaders in advocacy. So it wasn't a requirement; it was basically an opportunity."
She would also take vacation days to go volunteer on campaigns, a practice that she said was encouraged and that she was happy to do. Besides, she said, staff lose their jobs if their bosses lose reelection.
"It's a good reminder of how your boss got there and that you should be responsive to constituents," she said.
While she didn't take on extra paid work, she knew others who did and who told her they found it beneficial. Congressional staff pay is often low, especially in the early years, she said, and staffers' financial survival sometimes entails being bankrolled by wealthy parents or, absent that, taking on a second job.
Working on campaigns was "a better part-time job than bartending in Dupont," she said, referring to a tony DC neighborhood about a mile from the White House. "It's more relevant to what you're doing."
"The fact that some offices do it well proves some offices can do it better," she added.
Others who defend the practice say critics ignore crucial context.
For instance, every congressional office has a different budget. Senators who represent larger states generally have larger budgets, more staff, and more offices back in their home state.
Congressional campaigns are also not interchangeable. Some have shoestring budgets and can't afford to pay big salaries. Others are flush with cash.
"People look at Congress like it's one thing, and it's not," said one Republican senior Senate staffer who left the Hill for a year to work for his boss' 2020 reelection campaign. "Everybody is not going to get the same experience because the needs for each office are going to be different."
In some cases it might make sense, for instance, to have a communications staffer split their duties, because a state is smaller and a race isn't competitive.
In other cases, it might make sense to hire a second staffer to remain on Capitol Hill and send another one to work on the ground.
"When you're in an election season, the needs of the members are changing and what they need out of that position changes," he said.
He acknowledged that some bosses might improperly handle the workload. Still, he said staffers could see the extra work as an opportunity to propel their careers through added exposure, learning about fundraising, and building connections they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
For him, the main downside of taking the campaign-only route, he said, was losing that year of money toward his pension.
"That's the benefit of doing both," he said of those who have the opportunity to continue working on the Hill while contributing to the campaign. Still, he said he got a pay boost on the campaign and the pay was better when he returned to the Senate office after his boss was reelected.
The US Capitol building.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Junior staff shoulder the heaviest load
One of the reasons for the differences in opinion on campaign work is that experiences vary widely. Some staff will take months or a year off from their Capitol Hill jobs to work on a campaign. Others will scale back congressional service hours as a way to preserve existing retirement and healthcare benefits.
But junior-level staffers face challenges. Some told Insider that they worked for offices that pressured them to volunteer after-hours without receiving any pay.
"I was aware that I was being pushed past the limit of what was reasonable, but I was 24 years old and so happy to be a communications director and didn't want to upset the apple cart," the former Democratic communications director who worked during the 2016 cycle said.
"There's no real perspective," the former Democratic House scheduler said. "For most people, it was their first job out of college and you don't have anything to compare it to. You don't know what questions to ask."
Zoe Bluffstone, a spokeswoman for the Congressional Progressive Staff Association, told Insider that its recent survey found junior-level staffers don't feel like they have a voice and said many reported needing to take out loans or work a second job to make ends meet.
"They may feel like their full-time employment could be at risk if they don't participate on the campaign side," Bluffstone said. "Sometimes it can be framed as a 'rite of passage' for staff. Or, if there is compensation offered — which isn't guaranteed — they may desperately need the additional money to supplement the low pay for congressional staff."
Until recently, some junior-level staff made in the high $20,000s. The House recently boosted office budgets and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed the rules to require a minimum salary of $45,000 a year. For many, even the increased salaries won't be adequate to keep them in public service for very long, particularly in an expensive city like DC.
"This campaign pressure is just one other aspect of the unwritten rules that make being a staffer a hard lifestyle," Meredith McGehee said, "and one of the reasons you can't retain experienced staff."
22. ‘The Wire’ Stands Alone
The Wire is a fascinating study. of an urban "insurgency." View it from the point of view of an insurgency with an underground and auxiliary on one side and the imposition of population and resources control measures by the police to try to mitigate it. Intelligence and counterintelligence.
And this quote could apply to dealing with insurgency - adaptation and change or lack there of:
Instead, the run of “The Wire” reminds me of a comment by Detective Leander Sydnor (Corey Parker Robinson) as the unit winds down the first-season investigation. “This is the best work I ever did,” he says. “I never did a case like this. But it’s not enough.” Just because you show the world how the job could be done differently doesn’t mean the world will start doing it that way.
But for “The Wire” not to change TV was not a failure. It was proof of concept. After all, the series was an argument that institutions resist change. For it to have spent five seasons showing how to use long-form TV to its fullest, then get its retirement papers and some kind words while the medium went on the way it always did — Jimmy McNulty would laugh. It’s the most “Wire” ending you could write.
‘The Wire’ Stands Alone
Critic’s Notebook
After 20 years, the classic drama is much praised and rarely imitated. For a series based on the idea that institutions don’t change, that’s fitting.
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Credit...Chase Hall for The New York Times
By
June 2, 2022
When critics get to assessing a classic TV show, we have a weird tendency to turn into evolutionary biologists. We pull out the old television family tree and gauge the series’s achievement by how many branches we can trace back to it — how many series modeled one or another aspect on it. “Dragnet,” “The Simpsons,” “Lost” — you shall know them by their copycats.
And sure, influence is one measure of greatness. But so is inimitability. There is the painter who leaves behind a school of disciples, but there is also the artist who sees a color that no one has envisioned before or since.
“The Wire” premiered on HBO on June 2, 2002. In the two decades since, its reputation has only grown, as has its audience. It is one of those series, like the original “Star Trek,” that future generations will refuse to believe struggled with low ratings during its entire run. (Let alone that it was nominated for an absurd two Emmys, and won exactly none.)
But has anyone made another “Wire” since? Who — besides the creator, David Simon, in his later series — has emulated its sprawl, its complexity, its bucking of TV’s easy-to-digest episodic structure? TV fans and makers praise the show as a landmark and inspiration. Yet 20 years later, “The Wire” — like the cheese in the tune whistled by the show’s notorious drug bandit, Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) — stands alone.
The clown stays the clown
To appreciate what “The Wire” was, you first have to consider what it wasn’t. It was nothing like the half-century of police shows that came before it. Structurally, it didn’t offer a neatly solved case of the week; informed by the police experience of Simon’s collaborator Ed Burns, it was realistic and meticulously messy. Philosophically, it wasn’t convinced that it made much difference, in the grand scheme, if its cases got solved at all.
But it also wasn’t like cable dramas, such as “The Sopranos,” that were built around charismatic antiheroes whose exploits captivated the viewer and drove the plot. Oh, it had characters — dozens of lively creations, crackling with life and profane poetry. (In one tour de force sequence, two detectives scour a murder scene, speaking no dialogue except variations on the English language’s most versatile obscenity.) But whatever triumphs they had or bold choices they made, in the end their outcomes were fated by the systems they worked within.
“The Wire” presents the drug trade as capitalism in its rawest form, and no character illustrates this better than the pragmatic and brutal Stringer Bell, played by Idris Elba.Credit...Paul Schiraldi/HBO
It wasn’t really a cop show — or rather, it used that genre as a crowbar to jimmy open doors other cop shows didn’t enter: labor, education, media criticism. It was its era’s richest show about civic politics, while being set only part-time at City Hall. It was a savvy and layered legal drama. At times — as when the shotgun-toting Omar teamed with the hired gun Brother Mouzone (Michael Potts) for vengeance on the drug lord Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) — it was one of TV’s finest westerns.
So what was “The Wire,” really? It gives away the game in the very first scene. Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) is at the murder scene of one Omar Isaiah Betts, a.k.a. “Snot Boogie.” A witness tells him that Snot had tried to steal the purse from a weekly craps game. Every Friday night the group gambled; every week Snot tried to grab the cash.
“Why’d you even let him in the game?” McNulty asks, puzzled.
“Got to,” the witness says. “This America, man.”
It’s America. And in the America of “The Wire,” messed up things happen over and over like clockwork, and no one ever does differently because it’s just how things are done. That one dry exchange captures the spirit — the fatalism, the gallows humor, the recognition that the system doesn’t work and the pride in sticking with it anyway — that drove the entire series.
The first, most traditionally crime-focused season laid the foundation. There was a painstaking investigation of a Baltimore drug gang, using electronic surveillance — the “wire” of the title. But it was complicated by conflict between the unit and the higher-ups who wanted faster “buy-and-bust” arrests.
“The Wire” was cast to look like Baltimore, which meant that it had a vast and varied ensemble of Black characters, just three years after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People protested a fall broadcast schedule that didn’t have a single lead actor of color.
Here, Black actors would play the good guy, the bad guy and the morally conflicted guy, who were often the same guy in one. (I use “guy” advisedly. “The Wire” had memorable female characters — like Felicia Pearson, a.k.a. Snoop, playing a gravel-voiced gang enforcer under her own name — but it was predominantly male.)
Take Lt. Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), the head of the investigation unit, who was dedicated and principled but also torn by ambition and the pressures of department politics. In a scene that hits hard in a Black Lives Matter Era rewatch, he scolds a white officer who pistol-whipped a teenager — but also coaches him on how to beat the brutality charge. “He pissed me off,” the officer says. No, Daniels answers, “he made you fear for your safety.”
“The Wire” was determined not to be another story of hero cops and faceless perps. No group on “The Wire” would be less fully human than any other. Every element of the drug chain was richly drawn, from the kingpins to the low-level soldiers holding the corners to the junkies. “The Wire” didn’t just have a cast, it had an ecosystem.
It also had an ideology. The drug trade, the show recognized, was capitalism in its most raw, potent, uncut form, with a killer product, a captive market and a disposable work force. No character illustrates this better than the gangster economics student Stringer, whose business training makes him both more pragmatic and more brutal: He’ll avoid violence if it’s bad for profits, but when he does go to war, it’s with a machine-like coldness. After all, it’s just business.
In a famous early scene, the gang captain D’Angelo Barksdale (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) teaches his corner boys chess, using drug-world analogies. The pawns — i.e., them — die early, advance rarely and win never. “The king stay the king.” But the parable that sticks with me comes when the young dealer Wallace (Michael B. Jordan), savoring a Chicken McNugget, says that the man who invented them must be rich. D’Angelo scoffs. Ronald McDonald is rich, he says. “Mr. Nugget,” he adds, is “still working in the basement for regular wage,” thinking of ways “to make the fries taste better.”
In the world of “The Wire,” everyone who’s not on top — police, drug dealer, bureaucrat — is in that basement, managing upward and hustling to find ways to keep Ronald McDonald happy. The clown stays the clown.
A tough sell
The first season spins a satisfying detective story. Then it asks: Did any of this matter? The gang keeps running, under new management. McNulty gets exiled to a police boat for ticking off his superiors. The money trail to local politicians is left hanging. The story you spent 13 gripping hours following is barely a Band-Aid on the city’s dysfunction.
The rest of the series broadens the scope. Season 2 turns to the decimation of the city’s docks, where blue-collar jobs have disappeared, leaving drugs to fill the gap. Season 3, with the rise and fall of an experimental drug-decriminalization zone, shows how city politics make reform impossible.
Season 4 followed students played by, from left, Jermaine Crawford, Maestro Harrell, Tristan Wilds and Julito McCullum, through a heartbreaking year of middle school.Credit...Paul Schiraldi/HBO
Season 4 — as moving and wrenching a run of television as has ever aired — follows four city students through a year of middle school, their options already starting to fall away one by one. Season 5 pulls in the depleted local media — Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, settles some scores — to show why the years of drama we’ve watched barely rated a few column inches.
All this is a tough sell to viewers. We want to believe, as people, that individuals can make a difference. We are trained to expect, as viewers, characters who are masters of their own fate.
This might explain why the seemingly universal fan favorite is Omar, the stickup man. He’s insouciant and funny; he lives by a code; he may not be Robin Hood, but he limits himself to robbing hoods. He’s an outsider — an open, badass gay man in a homophobic environment.
Maybe most important, he’s a freelancer. He has no ladder to climb or bosses to answer to. He holds out hope that it’s possible for an individual to survive outside the system. So it hits hardest of all when he is finally taken out ignominiously, shot by a child in a convenience store.
In Jonathan Abrams’s history of “The Wire,” “All the Pieces Matter,” David Simon described his storytelling intent: “This is going to be a cruel world and nothing is going to get fixed that matters systematically.” But if things don’t change in this world, every once in a while, individuals can.
Thus Namond Brice (Julito McCullum), one of the four central middle schoolers in Season 4, appears to escape the gang life that sent his father to prison. And the addict Bubbles (Andre Royo), in many ways the emotional heart of the series, ends the finale climbing the stairs of his sister’s basement, where he had been confined while kicking the habit.
“The Sopranos” operated under the philosophy that people never change, even when the world does. In this small way, at least, “The Wire” is more optimistic.
Proof of concept
Actually, it’s not entirely true to say that nothing ever changes in the America of “The Wire.” Some things get worse.
Each generation of gang leaders is colder and more brutal than the one it kills off. The schools, the city departments and the press that holds them to account get more starved for funds. We don’t get “more with less,” in the words of the Season 5 premiere; we just get less.
It may be a bleak view, but it’s hard to say two decades of history have proven it wrong. Local news outlets are on life support, or worse. American democracy is in danger of becoming optional. The financial crisis and the pandemic showed the atrophy of our systems of protection and trust.
And Simon’s recent “We Own This City,” a kind of docudrama epilogue to “The Wire,” caught up with the corruption and brutality in Baltimore’s police force through and after the “rough ride” death of Freddie Gray, in 2015. You couldn’t expect “The Wire” to cure society, but it’s hard to dispute its diagnosis — if anything, “City” suggests, it could have been harsher.
Clarke Peters, left, and Dominic West in Season 5. Unlike most police shows that came before it, “The Wire” didn’t offer a neatly solved case of the week.Credit...Paul Schiraldi/HBO
As for changing TV, while we’ve gotten one variation after another on Tony Soprano and Walter White, there have been only occasional attempts (like ABC’s “American Crime”) to re-create or expand on “The Wire.”
It’s hard to pull off this kind of perspective-shifting, Balzacian sprawl without losing the audience. And it’s a rare feat to make drama out of a critique of systems without sounding like a textbook, or a tract. Maybe we don’t see more people emulate “The Wire” for the same reason more people don’t try to make Frederick Wiseman documentaries: The job is massive, and the commercial payoffs, historically, are not.
So what legacy does “The Wire” have? Its closest comparisons are Simon’s other urban-sprawling series, “Treme” (set in post-Katrina New Orleans) and “The Deuce” (Times Square in its high-sleaze era). Maybe you can see analogues, if you squint, in the anti-episodic long-game storytelling and realpolitik focus of “Game of Thrones,” though that series was based on a series of books that began before “The Wire” aired.
Superficially, “The Wire” was the precursor of many streaming dramas, which, assuming that audiences will binge them at a fast clip, dispense with traditional TV structure, following the “every season is an episode” philosophy. But let’s not get carried away; “The Wire” has little in common with the kind of algorithm-bait that drags itself out to boost a platform’s minutes-per-subscriber statistic. “The Wire” was big, yes, but it was packed as tight as a container ship.
Instead, the run of “The Wire” reminds me of a comment by Detective Leander Sydnor (Corey Parker Robinson) as the unit winds down the first-season investigation. “This is the best work I ever did,” he says. “I never did a case like this. But it’s not enough.” Just because you show the world how the job could be done differently doesn’t mean the world will start doing it that way.
But for “The Wire” not to change TV was not a failure. It was proof of concept. After all, the series was an argument that institutions resist change. For it to have spent five seasons showing how to use long-form TV to its fullest, then get its retirement papers and some kind words while the medium went on the way it always did — Jimmy McNulty would laugh. It’s the most “Wire” ending you could write.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
