Best thing you'll read all weekend, on CIA-HUR cooperation. I'll highlight the key bits below: nytimes.com/2024/02/25/wor…
CIA "put in the plumbing" for a massive partnership with HUR, Ukrainian military intelligence, around 2015, after Poroshenko's election and the appoint of Gen. Valeriy Kondratyuk, formerly the head of CI at SBU, as HUR chief.
One instant payoff was that Ukrainians were more adept at recruiting Russians than Americans were:
Though the tradecraft had to be acquired, as the Ukrainian services were still at a nascent stage of conducting foreign operations. This is great (and hilarious) anecdote about Operation Goldfish:
One constant throughout this war -- and remember, it's a war that began a decade ago -- is that Ukrainians are quick studies. A full relationship solidified in six months because HUR was a treasure trove of actionable intel on Russia.
People have marveled at HUR's capability to penetrate deep inside of Russia. But the capability was always there. What wasn't, until recently, was Washington's enthusiasm for such operations. I've heard Kondratyuk tell this story before -- and how Brennan apologized later.
CIA says "no," so you do it and don't tell them beforehand. Guess who took part in this mission into occupied Crimea? It went sideways, but the Unit 2245 team made it out alive; one operative even killed the son of an FSB Vympel general. The operative's name: Kyrylo Budanov.
The op cost Kondratyuk his job as head of HUR. But it elevated Budanov's career. And HUR didn't slow down. Here we have attribution that they killed "Motorola" and "Givi," two pro-Russian heavies from the 2014/2015 era in Donbas.
More hiccups with the Obama White House, but never mind. Joint CIA-HUR ops continued. They even led to this beaut, in which HUR tricked a GRU officer into giving up intel about Fancy Bear, the GRU hacking unit that leaked DNC, DCCC and Podesta emails to WikiLeaks.
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I read everything Dexter Filkins writes and so should you. His profile of Marco Rubio is no exception. I'll share a few highlights in this thread:
During the campaign I said J.D. Vance seemed like the sort of populist redneck a gaggle of South African tech bros might cook up in a Silicon Valley laboratory. Almost AI-generated. Anti-charismatic. Awkward in the extreme. And a hard sell absent the Trump juggernaut. Well, lookee here. Vance is not "a guy's guy" like Rubio. Trump thinks he's a bit weird, a bit wussy, and highly unlikeable. He even has buyer's remorse picking Vance as VP. The Maduro op and the past and future military action Iran show Marco's stock is up, J.D.'s is down. Vance gets to own the mess in Minnesota. Rubio gets to be viceroy of Caracas.
Here's a little something special from Sen. Mike Rounds, who not only confirms Rubio's call to his former Senate colleagues at the Halifax Security Forum last November, but emphasizes that the Dmitriev-Witkoff plan was really the Dmitriev plan: "... we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives." Indeed. And it was laundered, Rounds might have added, through a gullible press corp, which relied on Dmitriev, Witkoff and Kushner as sources (this when Witkoff played an active role in deceiving the same press corp about supposed daylight between Trump and Netanyahu on striking Iran) and didn't bother asking why the Secretary of State/NSA or CIA director were written out of a coalescing U.S. deal with Russia. Those sorts of things demand inter-agency buy-in. Instead, amateur diplomats made an end-run around the actual diplomat, and Rubio got his retaliation in by letting a group of bipartisan legislators do it for him. He then initiated a de-Russification process of Dmitriev's 28-point plan in Geneva, and lo and behold it's now a Ukrainian-coauthored 20-point plan, certified by Witkoff and Kushner and Trump in successive rounds in Florida. The Russians will inevitably reject it and more or less have already. This was very well played.
"A number of months ago, the U.S. captured a weapon that has been associated with Havana Syndrome. Both said it was seized by U.S. Special Forces during an operation...the weapon is under the Defense Department’s Intelligence & Security unit." sashaingber.substack.com/p/exclusive-us…
CNN now reports the device linked to Havana Syndrome was purchased by Homeland Security in the waning days of the Biden administration. And DoD has spent a year testing it. It has Russian components and fits in a backpack. cnn.com/2026/01/13/pol…
Two years ago, @InsiderEng, in collaboration with @60Minutes and @derspiegel, published a lengthy investigation into Havana Syndrome, and found links to GRU Unit 29155. You can read it here: theins.ru/en/politics/27…
Suggest European friends and allies read not only the National Security Strategy but also the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2026, which was published last night. It's very long, so skip to this section: rules.house.gov/sites/evo-subs…
Here, for instance, we see several amendments written in direct response to what Elbridge Colby has been doing at DoD while Pete Hegseth does chin-ups and tequila shots. Note the provision about reclassifying aid to Ukraine as needed U.S. stocks -- this cannot be done, per this draft, unless the kit is so badly needed for a contingency op, its absence could result in mission failure or loss of American lives:
Let's say Trump wants to punish Zelensky again for not wanting to forfeit Donbas by cutting intel sharing to Ukraine. He would have two days to notify Congress on this decision. And he'd have to explain why he did it and what the anticipated consequences to Ukraine would be. "Because I'm an asshole and I don't care" might not even suffice in this fast-changing political environment!
U.S. officials now confirmed what I wrote yesterday -- this whole thing was a Russian active measure, leaked to the press to sow panic and confusion and be conflated with U.S. policy in an administration where incompetence and dysfunction are evidently features, not bugs. macspaunday.substack.com/p/he-got-this-…
Utter fucking embarrassment for the United States, and it certainly explains the muted/cautious response by the Kremlin. I do hope Europe is paying close attention. *This* is the government they think they need to kowtow to.
Question now is who was pushing this "Russian wish-list" as a do-or-die plan of action to the Ukrainians from the American side? I think we know the answer. And why is the admin suddenly backing away from this thing?
New: I acquired the private memoir of Gen. Alexander Zorin, a senior GRU officer who was Putin's envoy to Syria and is now leading POW exchanges with Ukraine. A feature film, "Porcelain Soldier," is set to debut in Russia next month, all about Zorin's adventures -- sort of a Stierlitz meets Bourne production, which was green-lit by former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-…
In all, I've acquired over a thousand pages of documents: Zorin's 186-page memoir, which he titled "The Negotiator" (watch your back, Sam Jackson), some of the ancillary production material for the movie, and five iterations of the screenplay, each more cartoonish in plot and dialogue than the last. The first draft is actually rather nuanced and ends with Zorin weeping upon learning a rebel commander he persuaded to evacuate was subsequently killed by the Russian army after Zorin gave his word that would not happen. (Who says the GRU is a heartless organization?)
The memoir is a fascinating portrait of the life of a still-active Russian spy, made more fascinating because in his pursuit of self-aggrandizement Zorin inadvertently reveals things his masters in Moscow might not like. These include the sorry state of the Russian Air Force in Syria (as in Ukraine, jet pilots used store-bought Garmin GPS devices to navigate, causing near-miss mid-air collisions and much else). The shoot-first-ask-questions-never disposition of racist Russian military commanders. And the Mad Hatter illogic of Russian disinformation schemes about Syrian chemical weapons attacks.
Re: Trump's denial of the WSJ story, read this paragraph twice. Transferring authorization from Hegseth to Grynkewich is almost the scoop itself. Cuts Elbridge Colby out of the process, and one wonders how and why this decision was taken -- note, taken before the Ze visit to the WH -- given all Cheese's unflattering press. Trump recently called him "J.D.'s guy." (Second screenshot from prior WSJ piece on Colby pausing deep strike authorization under this review process.) wsj.com/politics/natio…
Not the first time Grynkewich v. Colby has popped up. When PURL was announced, Grynkewich was the guy named running point with DoD (logical enough given he's SACEUR). This was around the time of the Colby memo diverting USAI kit meant for Ukraine back into U.S. stockpiles. cnn.com/2025/08/08/pol…
Which led to articles such as this one in The Hill: