Recently declassified intelligence claiming Russia is preparing an elaborate “false flag” operation to create a pretext to invade Ukraine, just as the Biden administration dispatched thousands of U.S. troops to Eastern Europe while warning Ukraine faces an “imminent threat” seems “just a little too convenient,” according to former National Security Council (NSC) chief of staff and CIA official Fred Fleitz, who called for the release of the intelligence report for further analysis.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Friday, Fred Fleitz, who served as deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and the chief of staff of the NSC, discussed the Biden administration’s claim that Moscow is planning to fabricate a pretext to invade Ukraine.
Asked about the intelligence indicating an upcoming operation as well as the unusual manner it was declassified at a State Department briefing on Thursday, Fleitz cast doubt on its reliability.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the 70th National Prayer Breakfast at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on February 3, 2022. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
“I was in the intelligence community at the CIA for 19 years and I was with the House Intelligence Committee for five years, so I know a lot about intelligence and I know that intelligence reports are sometimes wrong [and] sometimes politicized,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talks to journalists in his office in Kiev on June 14, 2021. (SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
Fleitz, who currently serves as vice chair of the America First Policy Institute Center for American Security, also stressed the importance of allowing access to declassified information.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022. (Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
“There are many instances when CIA sources will tell the agency what it wants to hear because the sources want to be paid, so it’s important that when you have intelligence like this and if it’s declassified, you let people see it,” he said, adding if the administration is going to make a statement that we’ve declassified intelligence on this important development, “they need to show it to us [now that] it’s declassified.”
When that doesn’t happen, Fleitz argued, it signals something is amiss.
“When this administration says ‘we’ve declassified this intelligence but we won’t let you see it, [just] take our word on it’ — alarm bells go off for me,” he said.
“That’s not the way things operate,” he added.
He also addressed a recent heated exchange between Associated Press reporter Matt Lee and State Department spokesperson Ned Price regarding the nature of how the Biden administration chose to declassify the information through a verbal statement, without providing any documented evidence.
“Ned Price kept saying ‘I’ll give you a transcript of this press conference, then you’ll have a record of the declassified intelligence’ — that’s essentially what he said,” Fleitz said.
“And the reporter [Matt Lee] was angry at him and he said ‘no, it doesn’t work that way; if it’s declassified, that means the document has been released,’” he added, “‘and if that’s not the case it hasn’t been declassified.’”
“If it’s sensitive, it’s not declassified,” Fleitz elaborated. “If there’s some reason you can’t release it, it hasn’t been declassified; it’s an either-or, black or white.”
Asked why the declassified information wasn’t simply released in a report, Fleitz suggested it demonstrated that matters were likely being concealed from the public.
“Well, it suggests that there’s something wrong with this information,” he said.
“They’re obviously hiding something,” he added.
Fleitz then explained how releasing the report could help assess its credibility.
“Basically we could read the specifics of these actors who are supposedly being hired to pretend to be Ukrainians starting a false flag operation,” he said.
Noting that “sensitive names” of people and sources could be “blacked out,” Fleitz saw no justification in withholding the remaining information from the public.
“But they aren’t releasing anything,” he said. “They’re just saying, ‘take our word on it; we have this.’”
“That’s not good enough,” he added.
As a result of the administration’s decision not to release relevant information to the public, Fleitz gathered that the intel was likely weak.
“So my guess is that there’s something they’re hiding — that this information isn’t as good as what they’re saying it is,” he said.
Fleitz also claimed that an intelligence agency’s possession of such a cable says nothing of its reliability.
“There are intelligence reports alleging all kinds of wild stuff all the time,” he said. “That doesn’t mean this is true.”
“Let me put it to you this way, and we know this from hard experience: the fact that the CIA says something is true, doesn’t mean it is,” he explained. “We know better than that.”
Fleitz described the timing of the intelligence as “too convenient.”
“It’s awfully convenient this shows up when Biden is talking about an ‘imminent threat’ and they’re sending U.S. soldiers to the region,” he said.
“It’s just a little too convenient that this shows up at this moment,” he added.
Fleitz spent 25 years in various national security positions at the CIA, DIA, the Department of State, and the House Intelligence Committee staff.
He currently serves as vice chair of AFPI’s Center for American Security.
The remarks come as President Joe Biden continues to spar with Russia over Ukraine, announcing plans to send U.S. troops to Eastern Europe “in the near term” amid increasing tensions between the two countries.
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.