Americas

Sy Hersh: Overly Optimistic US Intel Reports on Ukraine to Lead to Disaster

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) withheld documents from the White House on anti-government extremist groups in Syria producing sarin gas and has been providing "insanely" optimistic assessments on the conflict in Ukraine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh stated on his Substack blog on Wednesday.
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DIA’s intelligence on Russia does not get to relevant hands in the White House because it is being ignored for political expediency, just like CIA reports on the current failed Ukrainian counteroffensive are being ignored by Blinken, Hersh said.
The journalist pointed out that he chose to publish a series of documents on his Substack because what the US Intelligence community did regarding Syria, it is doing once again regarding the Ukraine crisis.
If the same situation is allowed to persist regarding Ukraine, the conflict with Russia can scale up and that is an outcome that nobody wants, Hersh added.

"[Secretary of State Anthony] Blinken’s wrong-headed confidence... could be based on insanely optimistic assessments supplied by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA’s assessments, as I have reported, are now the intelligence of choice inside the White House," the journalist said.

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Hersh noted that amid calls for the United States to intervene in the Syrian conflict ten years ago, the White House was not provided with crucial intelligence because of its alleged "politically inconvenient" nature.
Such was the case of a detailed yet DIA-redacted five-page report from intercepts by the National Security Agency (NSA) that anti-government Islamist groups possessed the nerve agent sarin gas, the journalist stressed.
"It revealed the kind of truth that presidents then and now viewed as political poison," Hersh emphasized.
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US 'Lies' About Ukraine's Failed Counteroffensive - Ex-CIA Analyst
The much-touted counteroffensive attempt by the Kiev regime in early June has evidently been a failure, with massive losses and non-existent gains. A number of NATO generals, as well as Western military analysts, have already admitted the catastrophic situation of the Ukrainian forces.
Nevertheless, Ukrainian officials - following their Western masters - refuse to acknowledge the reality: Ukraine has lost virtually all of its strategic reserves together with an enormous amount of NATO-supplied military equipment in a futile effort to breach the Russian defenses.
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