The NYT leak

Is this just more propaganda or has the NYT actually started doing journalism again?

I’m sure that you have all heard about the new leak. The one that doesn’t have a convenient name yet, like the Pentagon Papers. Wikipedia is calling it the United States documents leak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but that’s a ghastly mouthful of an uncatchy description and not a proper name. I propose the “NYT Leak” because they broke this story and story is definitely the right word to describe it.

I want to talk about what this story tells us and what we can infer from the news coverage. I’m not going to dig into the military details in Ukraine because others, hat tip to Simplicius the thinker and Big Serge, have already done that more capably than I could. I’ll give a short summary for context and I’ll cite others where appropriate but I’m going to assume that you already know most of it.

First and foremost the MSM, and therefore the US government, wants you to know about this story. It has been front page news since the NYT broke the story about the NYT leak. And what they want you to know is that this is a big deal, the biggest leak in a long time and certainly of the biggest leak of this war. The NYT already has 17 articles about the leaks as of this writing. They want you to know that the leak itself is a big deal for security reasons. The revelations about the situation in Ukraine are a big deal. Also, the associated files that the Pentagon purged from the internet, so that we can’t see them but that the NYT still has, tell us about some other important, secret matters in the rest of the world which, though still important, are less of a big deal.

Here is the really short version. Some John Doe with access to top secret security briefings smuggled out paper printouts of a power point presentation for a security briefing of some kind. He took them home, photographed the documents, and posted them to a discord server. We don’t know who the guy is, but we do know that he posted classified documents to a small group of people to prove that he was a big shot or to win an internet argument or something like that and not because he was disgruntled or opposed to the war. A few people saw them but mostly those files sat in a dark corner of the internet gathering digital dust for a month. Then, the story gets vague here even by the standards of the rest of this story, somebody noticed and the files spread, the Pentagon purged them from the net, and the NYT ran a front page story about the leak. All in quick succession.

Without further ado here are the images. Hat tip to Richard Steven Hack who posted these files at Moon of Alabama, which then reposted them here.

There is one more that Substack didn’t want to load a Chinese analysis of these images, probably because it is a 24 MB html file, but you can get it from Richard Steven Hack’s google drive, assuming that no one purges it from the net. I posted everything that I have because most of the sites covering this story either post nothing or only post the handful that appear in this Grayzone article.

Again, the short version is that the information about the war in Ukraine is broadly accurate. It appears to be mostly taken from open sources and open source intelligence (OSINT) sites. For a much more thorough treatment see these posts by Simplicius and Big Serge. As far as the war in Ukraine goes there weren’t any important revelations or state secrets in this leak and what is in the documents basically agrees with what we see elsewhere with a couple of caveats.

So, either someone put all of this together to look credible but reveal nothing or the US intelligence community is completely reliant on outside OSINT. On the one hand this is an interesting and important distinction and on the other hand it makes zero difference to this story. It is actually a fine example of Orwellian doublethink where both answers are required to be simultaneously true for the narrative to make sense even though they contradict each other. On the one hand we can verify everything against open sources, so the information is accurate and not fake, on the other hand secret intel that doesn’t actually reveal anything isn’t exactly secret intel. In other words being able to verify the leak means that it is not a secret intel leak, but the news media apparently sees it both ways; the data checks out therefore it is a big leak. There are a few other examples of doublethink that crop up in this tale.

In fact, it is one of the most interesting things about this story. I’ll explain by way of the first caveat and the next example of doublethink, the casualty numbers. The casualty figures are a significant plot point here and illustrate the basic issue nicely. The documents give the casualty figures for Russia and Ukraine and they favor Ukraine 2:1. The Ukrainian numbers are straight from Ukrainian Ministry of Defense official publications and the Russian numbers match those in OSINT. The NYT has this to say about the leak:

A trove of leaked Pentagon documents reveals how deeply Russia’s security and intelligence services have been penetrated by the United States, demonstrating Washington’s ability to warn Ukraine about planned strikes and providing an assessment of the strength of Moscow’s war machine.

..

Intelligence officials have repeatedly insisted that their casualty numbers are offered with “low confidence,” meaning that they are at best rough estimates. The document also notes the low confidence assessment and further says that the United States is trying to revise how it assesses the combat power of the Russian military and its ability to sustain future operations.

..

The documents show that nearly every Russian security service appears penetrated by the United States in some way. For example, one entry, marked top secret, discusses the Russian General Staff’s plans to counter the tanks NATO countries were providing to Ukraine, including creating different “fire zones” and beginning training of Russian soldiers on the vulnerabilities of different allied tanks.

The awesome spycraft wielded by the US has penetrated every aspect of Russian intelligence and knows everything that they know. But US officials and the documents say that the casualty numbers are “low confidence,” so the US knows everything except for the basic things, like how many troops they have lost. Let’s do a quick sanity check to make sure that you understand. How many fingers am I holding up?

Second caveat, the leak does tells us some very specific things that we can’t verify, but unlike the detailed lists of units and gear or maps with positions marked these are just unsubstantiated anecdotes that paint Russia in an unfavorable light. This one alleges that the Russian army is in very poor condition in the eastern group. From the documents:

Russia reports insufficient personnel, Equipment Levels of Eastern GTF Subunits

The Russian National Defense Command Center in February disseminated a report on the decreased combat capability of military units operating under the Eastern Grouping of Troops (Forces) (GTF) due to an insufficient quantity of specialized personnel, functioning military equipment, weapons and ammunition as of 15 February. The Russian Federal Security Service Department for Military Counterintelligence reported security and munition storage protocol violations at field army warehouses within the 26th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, 29th Combined Arms Army that could possibly lead to incidents. Specifically, over-watch posts at the brigade’s combat positions were not fully deployed, security for the field army warehouse was not assigned, fake warehouse positions were not equipped, and munitions storage locations were not camouflaged. Additionally, vehicles were not being inspected for explosives, man-made barriers with ground sensors for the most dangerous areas of the artillery warehouse were not installed, and artillery ammunition was being stored outside of its packaging in an open field.

So, the Russian army is understaffed, under equipped, and isn’t doing its job properly. Man, those Russians sure do suck. Those same sucky Russians occupied an area in Ukraine the size of England in a month against the largest army in Europe. That pales in comparison to the next claim. You won’t believe how bad it is. I mean that literally. You will not believe that the following is real.

Ukraine Learns of Alleged Plot to “Throw” So-Called Special Military Operation By 5 March

Ukrainian Presidential Office Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak on 17 February learned of an alleged Russian plot to “throw” the so-called “special military operation.” presumably in an attempt to sabotage Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) member Yelyzaveta Bohutska, who received the information from an unidentified Russian source with access to Kremlin officials, Russia planned to divert resources from Taganrog, Russia to Mariupol, Ukraine and focus its attention on the southern front. According to Bohutska’s source, the plan for “the offensive” (no further information) was suspected to be a strategy devised by Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev and Russian Chief of the General Staff Valeriy Gerasimov to sabotage presumably Putin. According to Bohutska’s source, Gerasimov opposed the offensive; he informed Putin that the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ capabilities were superior to Russia’s and cautioned that Russia would suffer heavy casualties were it to proceed with the offensive. Bohutska on 22 February indicated that Gerasimov reportedly planned to continue his efforts to sabotage the offensive, noting that he promised to “throw” the so-called special military operation by 5 March, when Putin was allegedly scheduled to start a round of chemotherapy and would thus be unable to influence the war effort.

Wow, there’s a lot to unpack here. First, the central claim is that higher ups in the Russian state, Putin’s inner circle, were planning to sabotage the president by throwing the war. Putin’s approval rating is currently north of 80% so politically he is in a pretty solid position. But the Ukrainian officials claim that some of Putin’s officials are willing to sacrifice their countrymen by deliberately throwing troops into a suicidal offensive just to make Putin look bad and maybe cost him the next election. Shouldn’t this intel be coming from the US’s awesome sypcraft that has penetrated all the Russian security and intelligence agencies and not from a Ukrainian MP? Second, Putin has cancer? Finally, why is this a “so-called Special Military Operation?” The Russians are calling it an SMO because technically Russia hasn’t declared war and military conflicts in undeclared wars are called SMOs in Russia, much like the US called its undeclared wars in Korea and Vietnam “police actions.” And while it might score some political points to belittle the terminology in a more public forum, a secret intelligence briefing really isn’t the the right venue to win points by tacking on “so-called” every time the SMO is mentioned. This doesn’t look like the sort of reputable information that should be in an intelligence briefing. It looks more like the sort of scandalous click bait one see in a tabloid.

So what does all of this mean?

It looks like someone went to a lot of trouble to craft these documents to look legitimate on first blush. They don’t hold up on closer inspection, there aren’t important secrets, exactly nothing is revealed about US satellite capabilities, signal intelligence, human intelligence, or military capabilities.

The one bit of semi-actionable intelligence in the documents is the compositions of Ukraine’s forces with their new western equipment, Simplicius has the complete breakdown of who has what, but the Ukrainians have already announced that they are changing their plans over these leaks, leaks that they are calling fake. So, once again, we are expected to believe that the information is both true and false.

This isn’t a Russian disinformation campaign against the west or a US disinformation campaign against Russia. This is a US campaign against the American people. I’m afraid that is the only explanation that is consistent with the facts. Let’s look at the consequences of this leak.

Military? None.

Spycraft? None.

US or Russian plans? None.

MSM media coverage? Oh my god yes! They are currently halfway between apoplexy and euphoria. The Pentagon is in a panic, the State Department is in crisis mode, the Department of Justice has launched and investigation, and the MSM is running all of it on the front page. The Gray Lady is clapping with glee, giddy as school girl. It’s taken years off of her grey visage. Well, except for those veins bulging on her forehead. Completely unlike her response to Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream story. That story is comparable in many ways, but wasn’t covered in the MSM.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh broke a story about the US blowing up Nord Stream and the MSM response was crickets. The NYT didn’t even mention it until a month later when a new, and much less plausible, story came out about Ukrainians renting a yacht to do the deed. In that new story, broke by Die Zeit and, you guessed it, the NYT, they included one paragraph to explain his claims and another to dismiss them.

Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of Mr. Biden. In making his case, Mr. Hersh cited the president’s preinvasion threat to “bring an end” to Nord Stream 2, and similar statements by other senior U.S. officials.

U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.

The two tales make a great compare and contrast. The Nord Stream sabotage was an act of war against Russia and a US ally and as far as we can tell there has been no impact on US German relations. Unlike the feeble claims that the NYT Leak caused a diplomatic crisis by exposing that the US spies on its allies, which we already knew was happening on a regular basis, hat tip to Edward Snowden.

The way that I see it there are three major consequences that emerge from the NYT Leak.

One, increased public pressure to do something about leaks in general and leaks through social media and discord servers in particular. Something like the RESTRICT Act that would give the government much greater leeway to censor things that it didn’t like. Much like Pearl Harbor paved the way for the US entry into WWII or 9/11 lead to a pliant congress rubber stamping the PATRIOT Act, the NYT Leak sets the stage for more censorship.

Two, the much ballyhooed Ukrainian spring offensive will be canceled or delayed. Possibly delayed until this Summer when major NATO exercises take place in Europe. Ostensibly because Russia now knows about the offensive when they were presumably clueless about it before. The spring offensive needed to happen to satisfy political requirements to be seen making progress in the war, but it didn’t have anywhere near enough troops or firepower to get the job done. The leak gives a good excuse to call it off for now.

Three, this leak gives the government carte blanche to have the MSM break new stories that have essentially been prevetted. There were supposed to be over 100 documents in this leak, but so far the internet has only rounded up less than 50 of them. The US government and the MSM are currently going through the motions of establishing the bonafides of this leak. So, if a new document were to come to light it would automatically be included under the umbrella of the other, totally legitimate documents. For at least the next six months any claim that the US would like to lay down will be automatically accepted as ironclad truth.

Welcome to Wonderland. The crazy is just getting started.

Edit: feedback has indicated that I should spell out that Gray Lady is a nickname for the NYT and the how many fingers reference is to the 1984.