What Next: Ukrainian War, American Intelligence

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Slate Podcasts

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.5 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s not unusual for the U.S. to lend intelligence to another country. It’s a little more unusual for the U.S. to talk about it. Why is the American military confirming reports that it’s helping Ukraine vanquish Russian targets? Could that candidness lead to an expansion of the war? Or will it be the deciding factor in finishing the conflict? Guest: Shane Harris, reporter covering intelligence and national security for the Washington Post. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:36.8	So Shane, I'm going to enlist you to help solve a mystery. Are you ready? Oh yeah, I'm always up for a mystery.
0:45.4	Shane Harris reports on national security over the Washington Post and the mystery I was hoping
0:50.9	he could solve. It revolved around this contradictory reporting I read last week. First, there was an
0:56.1	article in the New York Times. It had a simple headline. US intelligence is helping Ukraine to kill
1:03.4	Russian generals. Seems really straightforward, right? Right. A day later in the military times,
1:10.8	Pentagon denies US intelligence is targeting Russian generals in Ukraine. And then my favorite
1:18.8	of these headlines is from New York magazine. It says US admits and denies helping Ukraine kill
1:27.0	Russian generals. So I'm confused like who's right here? So there are three words that are
1:36.2	doing a lot of work in these headlines. One is intelligence. The other is targeting. And the other
1:42.1	is helping or help. I feel like there's a very complicated, very lawyer chain that this information
1:53.1	is going through. I mean, what gave you that impression? Shane says this linguistic dance
2:01.9	is all about plausible deniability. Did these generals die? Yes. Were they inside commanding
2:08.8	control facilities that were visible to US intelligence? Also, yes. Did the US tell Ukraine about
2:16.6	these commanding control facilities? Definitely. But the Biden administration does not want anyone
2:23.0	thinking the war in Ukraine is being led by them. The United States is not helping Ukraine to
2:31.2	target. It's a very important word target. Russian facilities or people or equipment.
	...

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