"Well, [Zelensky's] a sleaze," McGovern told Sputnik. "The very telling part of what Sy writes here is that [CIA Director] Bill Burns (...) was sent to see Zelensky tête-à-tête, one on one. And he says: 'Look, you're taking too much of a cut and the other guys are getting mad, including the generals, you've got to pare down your own cut.' And someone who knows told Sy Hersh that. Another thing Sy talks about is the advisers, Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken and the others – you know, I call them sophomores – and Sy has promoted them to juniors, calls them juniors now. But he says, you know, they had no experience, no judgment, no moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up stories, diplomatic deniability or something else. But then they just lie through their teeth. Well, you know, there's a breakdown in trust between these guys who have been able to do what they want until now and the intelligence people who see something really bad is coming. And that 'really bad thing' is the Russian offensive that is likely to start late May, early June, as soon as the mud is okay to traverse. And what's going to happen then is going to force decisions on the administration, most unwelcome decisions."
"This notion that they got another year in these documents that were released – not Sy's, but others – they talk about DIA assessing – it's a great word, isn't it, 'assessing' – and they assess that this will drag on into 2024 for sure," McGovern continued. "This is coming to a head, as soon as the Russians can move on the dirt roads, as well as the highways, they're going to go all the way to the upper river. And then it's going to be decision time. And if the American people are completely unprepared for this – and those documents show that our key leaders have been lying through their teeth about all this – that is going to be really hard for Biden to decide, his juniors to decide what to do. This is very very dangerous because they have a lot of capital sunk in this business about doing it for as long as necessary. So it's coming to a head. This is nothing funny at all about this. And the total breakdown, as Sy puts it, between the White House leadership and the intelligence community is really key."