Author: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

September 5, 2022

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Ukraine Decision Time
REF: Nukes Cannot be Un-Invented, VIPS

Mr. President:

Before Defense Secretary Austin flies off to Ramstein for the meeting Thursday of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group we owe you a few words of caution occasioned by our many decades of experience with what happens to intelligence in wartime. If he tells you Kyiv is beating back the Russians, kick the tires – and consider widening your circle of advisers

Truth is the coin of the realm in intelligence analysis. It is equally axiomatic that truth is the first casualty of war, and that applies to the war in Ukraine as well as earlier wars we have been involved in. When at war, Defense Secretaries, Secretaries of State, and generals simply cannot be relied upon to tell the truth – to the media, or even to the President. We learned that early – the hard and bitter way. A lot of our comrades in arms did not come back from Vietnam.

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals: Ukraine Decision Time for Biden”

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Military Clash With China Over Pelosi Visit?
REFERENCE: VIPS Memo to You, May 1, 2022

Mr. President,

We, the undersigned, collectively, have hundreds of years of service to the United States of America in intelligence and national security. We have drawn upon this accumulated experience to communicate to you (and to the three presidents before you) our concerns over controversial national security issues of high importance. On May 1, we wrote you an Alert Memo on Russia-Ukraine. Today, we offer an even more urgent warning of the risk of war – including nuclear war – this time with China.

That Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible visit to Taiwan is of grave concern to China is well known. Indeed, you just heard it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, China’s President Xi Jinping.

Presumably, your advisers have prepared assessments regarding the extent to which the expressed Chinese concerns articulate genuine existential concerns or are mere saber rattling and diplomatic posturing. We want you to know that it is our collective opinion that such a visit by Speaker Pelosi would be viewed in the most serious light by China; that China would react quite strongly, reflecting the reality that it would consider such a visit close to an existential threat warranting high risk of armed hostilities.

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: Military Clash With China Over Pelosi Visit?”

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Nuclear Weapons Cannot Be Un-invented, Thus …
PRECEDENCE: IMMEDIATE
REF: Our Memo of 12/20/20, "Don’t Be Suckered on Russia"

May 1, 2022

Mr. President:

Mainstream media have marinated the minds of most Americans in a witches’ brew of misleading information on Ukraine – and on the exceedingly high stakes of the war. On the chance you are not getting the kind of "untreated" intelligence President Truman hoped for by restructuring intelligence, we offer below a 12-point factsheet. Some of us were intelligence analysts during the Cuban missile crisis and see a direct parallel in Ukraine. As to VIPs’ credibility, our record since Jan. 2003 – whether on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or Russia – speaks for itself.

1. The growing possibility that nuclear weapons might be used, as hostilities in Ukraine continue to escalate, merits your full attention.

2. For almost 77 years, a common awareness of the awesome destructiveness of atomic/nuclear weapons created an (ironically stabilizing) balance of terror called deterrence. Nuclear-armed countries have generally avoided threatening to use nukes against other nuclear-armed countries.

   Continue reading “Intel Vets: Nuclear Weapons Cannot Be Un-Invented”

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Media Working On Mousetrap For Summit

Summary: With your meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Geneva just three days away, mainstream media are barely reporting – and at times distorting – olive-branch remarks by Putin, and are at pains to "accentuate the negative". We are particularly concerned over the incessant media commentary on "Russian hacking", which seems to be aimed at mousetrapping you into an ill-advised confrontation with Putin. Revelations since the last summit in July 2018 – including testimony under oath to Congress – give President Putin some very high cards. Should things get acrimonious, he might decide to put them into play.

Putin’s interview by NBC’s Keir Simmons Friday is a case in point. Little media attention has been given to Putin’s most salient remark (the language itself was given a sloppy, voice-over translation into English). Putin highlighted the welcome difference he sees in you in contrast to former President Trump. You, he said, are "a different kind of person, and I very much hope that … there will not be any impulsive acts from him" ("him" meaning you). The NBC translator rendered the Russian, more ambiguously and somewhat misleadingly, saying Putin was very much hoping "there will not be any impulse-based movements on behalf of the sitting president".

Similarly, speaking on Russia’s Channel 1 on June 4, Putin called you "an experienced, balanced, and ‘akkuratny’" politician. U.S. news services lazily translated that Russian word "akkuratny" into "accurate". But the word means "cautious". The (invidious) comparison, of course, is with the highly impulsive, incautious Trump. Putin added that he hoped that those qualities would have a positive effect at the summit. These remarks grabbed no headlines in the Western Establishment media, which continues to demonize Putin and "all his works and all his pomps".

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: Media Working on Mousetrap for Summit”

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Avoiding War in Ukraine

Dear President Biden,

We last communicated with you on December 20, 2020, when you were President-elect.

At that time, we alerted you to the dangers inherent in formulating a policy toward Russia built on a foundation of Russia-bashing. While we continue to support the analysis contained in that memorandum, this new memo serves a far more pressing purpose. We wish to draw your attention to the dangerous situation that exists in Ukraine today, where there is growing risk of war unless you take steps to forestall such a conflict.

At this juncture, we call to mind two basic realities that need particular emphasis amid growing tension between Ukraine and Russia.

First, since Ukraine is not a member of NATO, Article 5 of the NATO Treaty of course would not apply in the case of an armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Second, Ukraine’s current military flexing, if allowed to transition into actual military action, could lead to hostilities with Russia.

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity on Avoiding War in Ukraine”

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President-elect
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Attempts to Sucker You Into Russia-Bashing

Dear President-elect Biden,

“Fool Me Once …” You may recall that President George W. Bush could not remember the last part of that aphorism. No matter. It turned out that – on Iraq – Bush was not fooled by bad intelligence. Rather, he and Vice President Dick Cheney were determined to attack Iraq and asked malleable former colleagues of ours to manufacture intelligence to “justify” that catastrophic war.

It was so bad that Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller described prewar intelligence as “unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.” James Clapper, who was in charge of imagery analysis, admits in his memoir that the Bush/Cheney pressure to document a rogue WMD program in Iraq was so intense that “intelligence officers, including me, were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.”(Emphasis added).

That coterie of “intelligence officers” – first and foremost CIA Director George Tenet and his protégé Michael Morell – were able to pull the wool over the eyes of enough members of Congress to grease the skids for unnecessary war. Many of the latest crop of intelligence leaders bubbled up to the top for services rendered under the malleable Tenet, and seem to have adopted his flexible attitude toward truth.

Continue reading “Intel Vets to Biden: Don’t Be Suckered on Russia”