Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on agriculture in Rostov region, Russia, September 24, 2015. REUTERS/ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/RIA NOVOSTI/KREMLIN
NPR: Spy Vs. Spies: Why Deciphering Putin Is So Hard For U.S. Intelligence
American intelligence officers are trained to tackle tough targets.
But there are tough targets, and then there's Russian President Vladimir Putin, who plays his cards so closely that it's hard for his own advisers to divine what he's thinking, says Gregory Treverton, chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
"Putin is so isolated that the chances that he might miscalculate and do something rash are top of my list for things I worry about," says Treverton. "I am fond of distinguishing between puzzles — those things that have an answer, though we may not know it — and mysteries, those things that are iffy and contingent. And so how Putin is going to behave is presumably a mystery, and probably even a mystery to Putin."
Treverton is not alone in this view.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: Putin has been in power for 17 years .... and he rules a country that is no longer a closed society .... including his office. The information is all there .... they (the U.S. intel community) just needs to know how to get it. But it appears that U.S. intelligence is in the dark, and if this is true .... in my opinion it is time for the U.S. intelligence community to purge their Russian desk.
8 comments:
It's not a case of them being in the dark, or needing to purge their Russian desk,
"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Washington lives in a bubble.
While a Carrier guy might have to train his Mexican Counterpart on his job, so the factory can move to Mexico,
Freidman and Brooks are safe, because nobody's going to outsource their jobs to India.
"Putin is so isolated that the chances that he might miscalculate and do something rash are top of my list for things I worry about," says Treverton. "I am fond of distinguishing between puzzles — those things that have an answer, though we may not know it — and mysteries, those things that are iffy and contingent. And so how Putin is going to behave is presumably a mystery, and probably even a mystery to Putin."
So, because Putin doesn't blab and babble 24/7 about what, where, when, and who he's doing something with (as our inimitable DC crowd does), he is a puzzle, mystery, and yes you heard it right an enigma. Please excuse any typos or other mistakes, it's very hard to type laughing this hard.
I await further analyses with a straight face.
Yup,
In contrast, they could just read the transcripts.
In the interest of taking a cheap shot (which I will for it is so easy)
a video showing the melding of US political policy and intelligence procurement:
https://youtu.be/2ZksQd2fC6Y
Also a gold star to the first person to spot a pundit using the...........matryoshka doll analogy when describing Putin!
Can I have the Mayerstrokia dolls instead of the gold star?
Unfortunately it's gold star only, but the analogy must be spotted, documented, skinned and cleaned. Pundits can be very wily.
They say the fish rots from the head.
So...
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