Authored by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Dangerous Talk of Putin’s ‘Loss’ in Ukraine

VIPS tells President Trump that once apprised of the reality on the ground (and in the air) by his intelligence advisors, he might choose to do what is in his power to end the disaster in Ukraine.

Dear President Trump:

The New York Times is reporting that the outlook for Russia in Ukraine is “bleak.” C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe is said to have explained that to the Russians while in Moscow Tuesday. He reportedly urged them “to cut a deal before their military and economic situation gets worse.”

We write you on the chance you may be taken in by this latest song and dance. We believe it is orchestrated by the same kind of geniuses who told President Joe Biden to announce on July 13, 2023, in a major speech in Helsinki, that the Russians had “already lost the war” in Ukraine.

We suggest that you “kick the tires,” if they try to sell you that same car. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your predecessor was ill-served by intelligence. We suspect you are getting the same tendentious treatment from your own advisers. Indeed, many of them seem unconscionably relaxed about risking wider war with Russia over Ukraine.

We offer you, as we offered Biden, the following jogs to memory:

— December 3, 2022: “Russia is using up ammunition quite quickly. It’s pretty extraordinary. Our sense is that Russia is not capable of indigenously producing what they are expending at this stage.” (National Intelligence Director Avril Haines)

— March 18, 2022: “Russia has lost in Ukraine. The West should recognize this Russian defeat.” (Anatol Lieven, Quincy Institute)

— July 1 & July 7, 2023: “Putin’s war has already been a strategic failure for Russia – its military weaknesses laid bare; its economy badly damaged for years to come.” (C.I.A. Director William Burns)

The Church of Latter-Day Pundits

Two NY Times journalists who specialize in intelligence matters report Thursday that this latest version of the Russia-has-already-lost story is “the current C.I.A. director’s assessment.” They warn somewhat quizzically that, despite this, President Putin might ignore it “and choose to keep fighting.” But why would Putin do that?

Indeed, the Gray Lady and her intelligence sources seem quite baffled by why Putin would keep trying when, according to U.S. officials and pundits, he started losing three and a half years ago and continues to lose. Could it possibly be that it was they that were wrong – terribly wrong?

Dismissing that as a possibility, they perform a somersault, straighten up, and chose to blame Putin’s advisers who, the Times says, have not “given Putin honest assessments of the war’s trajectory and toll.”

If Black Humor is at work here, we do not find it funny. The slaughter in Ukraine brings hundreds of victims daily.

Russia is methodically advancing in Donbass along a thousand-mile front, it is weathering drone attacks on its oil and civilian infrastructure with enhanced interception and has enforced a virtual blockade on Ukraine’s largest port, Odessa, with withering aerial attacks. Ukraine’s manpower and interceptor shortages make it impossible for it to ever recover its lost territory, as you acknowledged after your meeting with President Putin in Alaska.

Mr. President, if you were given access to reality-based, honest intelligence, you would be able to decide for yourself whose advisers have gotten it right over these past five years. And, once apprised of the reality on ground (and in the air), you might choose to do what is in your power to end the disaster in Ukraine.

Déjà Vu

This is not the first time we advised a president to seek unbiased advice with a view toward avoiding unnecessary, catastrophic war. We did that just a few hours after Colin Powell’s deceptive presentation to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003.

Today, we strongly suggest that you broaden your circle of advisers, as we urged President George W. Bush to do then, in our first VIPS Memorandum, which ended with this recommendation:

“After watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY (VIPS)

• Fulton Armstrong, former National Intelligence Officer (ret.)

• Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (ret.); Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research

• Philip Giraldi, C.I.A., Operations Officer (ret.)

• Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq and Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

• Larry C. Johnson, former C.I.A. and State Department Counter Terrorism officer

• John Kiriakou, former C.I.A. Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

• Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003

• Douglas MacGregor, Colonel, USA (ret.) (associate VIPS)

• Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army infantry/intelligence officer & C.I.A. analyst; C.I.A. Presidential briefer (ret.)

• Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer/NE, National Intelligence Council & C.I.A. political analyst (ret.)

• Scott Ritter, former MAJ, USMC; former U.N. Weapons Inspector, Iraq

• Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

• Sarah G. Wilton, CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)

• Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War