More On Classification, Doc Handling, Leaks (Also Sudan)

I have a funeral to attend today, so this will be brief.

Larry Johnson has another update on the leak controversy. In his presentation, Johnson revises what he has previously said, in the direction that commenter chuck99z28 pointed to earlier. Part of that revision is that CIA Op Center docs may actually be accessible from the type of SCIFs that Teixeira worked in—although not necessarily accessible to Teixeira. It’s complicated. Johnson includes an important caveat in the first paragraph below that pertains to such CIA docs.

Here is the key part of what Johnson has to say:

MORE DISCUSSION ABOUT THE LEAKED INTELLIGENCE DOCUMENTS

In between my chat with Judge Nap and Scott Ritter, I received a tip from a friend that some of the Air Force bases do in fact have access in the SCIFs to the CIA documents allegedly posted by Jack Texeira. Apparently, there are a number of CIA officers posted at these bases and a decision was made a few years back to open the access to them. But the access is not wide open. You have to have the right “tickets” in order to get into that compartment.

This is a point I failed to mention in previous posts — i.e., ticketed permission. …

The same sort of system applies to folks with a TOP SECRET clearance. You may have a TS, SCI clearance, which Jack Texeira reportedly had, but that does not grant you full, unfettered access to all intelligence posted on the TS server.

Importantly, Johnson has embedded two videos at the linked post. The first is with Andrew Napolitano, the second is an hour long and is a conversation between Johnson and Scott Ritter. I highly recommend that second video, because it features two very experience intel guys discussing the way things were—and mostly still are—and the changes in doc/intel handling that have taken place. They also get into extended discussions of how intel is collected (sources and methods) and later presented up the chain of command—and how this all plays into the leak controversy. Without attempting to summarize, one point that Ritter makes—and with which Johnson agrees—is that the real damage done by the leaks has to do with the sources and methods that are, implicitly, revealed.

I think this discussion should be very informative.

Now, in terms of some subject matter discussion in the video, shortly after the 34 minute mark Johnson flatly states that, as a result of the March 4 meeing between Xi and Putin in Moscow, “CIA Policy in the Middle East is in a complete shambles.” He specifically cites the CIA funded and directed wars in Yemen and Syria.

My guess is that the current, recently initiated, civil war in Sudan is tied into that development. Sudan is like a lot of regions surrounding the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea—Horn of Africa, Yemen, South Yemen, Eritrea, Ethiopia. It’s pretty hard for most of us to come up with a scorecard that identifies “good guys” versus “bad guys”. Still, within that messed up spectrum, the “rebel” forces in Sudan, the RSF, consists of some pretty certifiably bad actors. Wikipedia makes that pretty clear:

The Rapid Support Forces … are Sudanese paramilitary forces formerly operated by the Government of Sudan. The RSF grew out of, and is primarily composed of, the Janjaweed militias which fought on behalf of the Sudanese government during the War in Darfur, and was responsible for numerous atrocities against civilians. The RSF's actions in Darfur qualify as crimes against humanity according to Human Rights Watch.

Alliances and alignments in this region are constantly shifting—or so it seems to me. Right now, it appears that the RSF are “our guys”. My speculation is that, with Saudia Arabia defecting to the Russian - Chinese sphere of influence, reconciling with Iran (think Yemen), Egypt also realigning in that direction, the US is scrambling to save what remains of its network in the Red Sea region. The Sudanese government recently announced that it would host a Russian naval base on the Red Sea—that follows the visit of Russia’s most advanced surface ship, armed with hypersonic missiles, to Saudi Arabia. It makes sense, then, that the Neocons would have decided to stage a coup in Sudan to prevent the Russian base from becoming a reality. While the situation is murky, in these circumstances it appears that the RSF is starting to lose the civil war, given that Anthony Blinken yesterday called for an “immediate ceasefire”. Not next week, not tomorrow—immediate. In any event, this looks like a pretty good example of how Putin and Xi have drastically changed global geopolitical dynamics.

In addition, Johnson’s scathing remarks about the WSJ reporter who was recently arrested in Russia for espionage should be of interest as well. He ties that in to the Teixeira case.