“Pentagon Leaks Show Washington ‘Dissidents’ Want ‘Offramp’ from Ukraine ‘Disaster’ ”

April 12, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—That was the headline of an article in Sputnik International about the recent dramatic leaks of secret Pentagon documents, which featured extensive comments by former diplomat and adviser to the Republican Senate leadership James Jatras, and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Jatras told Sputnik that the leak “indicates that there are some dissident voices within the U.S. government who are not comfortable with the direction of policy.... (They) would like to slow it down or maybe even change its course ... (but are still) a distinct minority within the establishment,” he stressed.

Jatras emphasized that the leak came from the DOD, and not State. “There are people within the military who realize that we’re moving toward a potential disaster in Ukraine. Those are more realistic people. They’re familiar with the hard facts of military power,” while the State Department and the White House “believe their own propaganda.” Jatras explained that there is a long U.S. “tradition” of using leaks to change policy, but in the past “none of those things made much difference in the direction of American policy. It still took years for the policy establishment to be ground down by having reality catch up with them.” It may take a “really disastrous development on the ground in Ukraine” to change the current policy, Jatras argued.

Ray McGovern also focused on what the leaks mean regarding policy fights occurring in the U.S. “This is somebody who has access to highly sensitive information, probably at the Joint Chiefs of Staff level,” McGovern stated, “who decided, my God, you know, if the American people knew this, maybe we could stop this terrible, inexorable drift toward wider war in Ukraine and perhaps including nuclear weapons.” McGovern argued that the leak showed that “people in Washington are trying to find their offramp” and need to “expose the lies that have been told by people like the defense secretary, people like the head of the CIA.”

“There’s a hopeful sign here that these leaks will shut the Americans into thinking, whoa, wait a second, we’ve been lied to about this war. Ukraine is not winning,” McGovern said. “Maybe it’s time to sit down, do something sensible and negotiate.”

McGovern was also interviewed by The Point on CGTN last night, where he said that the contents of the leak were a “hodge podge” of good and bad intelligence, but the real story emerges if you ask “cui bono?” Why did the New York Times and the Washington Post decide to play the story up prominently, when they have no problem covering things up when they don’t want people to know about them? He said this indicated to him that there is a “battle royal” underway in policymaking circles.les.