Dave Smith on the Pentagon Document Leaks

The leaked document. Like, what was your thoughts on that? Because the whole thing was crazy that this guy had access to it. That, and I guess he was showing it to his friends or something? Is that what it was? Well, it seems that way. You know, a lot of people kind of were criticizing the guy and they were kind of saying like, well, look, this guy is no Ed Snowden. I mean, he didn't like take this to Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian to have him vet through it and properly disclose it. He's like bragging to friends on a Discord server or whatever. And essentially that seems right to me. Like that does kind of seem like what happened. But again, like that's not the interesting story here. The interesting story isn't like what this guy's deal was or what his motives were. The story is like, oh, the government's lying to you again. And also that it's they have this information that they claim is so vital that it's so horrible. He leaked it and yet you're so reckless with it that you know, it's like it's funny. I remember Glenn Greenwald making this point when people would talk about like people were at the National Security apparatus or whatever would be talking about how how reckless it is that Snowden just like gave all of this information out and you're like, well, then weren't you pretty reckless too? Because like if this information is so vital, you didn't even know it was gone. Right. They didn't even know it was gone until the Guardian published it and then they were like, oh, I guess this guy took all of our documents. What another of what did the documents say? Well, just right before that, one of the other real interesting thing is that they came out. So a couple days after the leak first, like was getting reported, the Reuters had a piece an article where they had three high-level US officials under anonymity said that you'll never believe this, Joe. It had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. And so isn't it just amazing that they'll go and then like two days later, they completely gave up on that and went, let's just smear the kid who did it. You know, like I forget all that stuff. There were some some interesting revelations from from the documents, things like they they're evidently there are NATO and US military embedded in Ukraine. Like help assisting them basically, which is which is pretty dangerous. Western Special Forces operating inside Ukraine. One document dated 23 March refers to the presence of a small number of Western Special Forces operating inside Ukraine without specifying their activities or location. The UK has the largest contingent 50 followed by Latvia 17 France 15 and the US 14 the Netherlands one Western governments. Typically refrain from commenting on such sensitive matters. But this detail is likely to be seized upon by Moscow, which has in recent months argued that is not just confronting Ukraine but NATO as well. And essentially look, this was the I think what when Putin ultimately decided to invade Ukraine last year. I think basically what he concluded was that they did it. They brought Ukraine into NATO even though Ukraine is not an official NATO country at this point. They backed the coup that overthrew the Democratic the democratically elected government under Yanukovych. They poured weapons into the country and they were doing joint training exercises with NATO and the Ukrainian military and I think Vladimir Putin was basically like we told them this was our brightest of red lines and they crossed it and I got to do something now. I'm not saying he should have done this. There's other things he could have done. There's lots of things. I mean, I don't know exactly you get creative, but he could have cut off all natural gas to Europe. He could have dropped a nuke in the ocean. I mean, he could have done something before he did this, you know, but he basically concluded that Ukraine is de facto a member of NATO. And if you look at the way we're responding to this whole thing, he's kind of right. I mean like we're backing them all the way because they were invaded. That's what we're supposed to do to a NATO country, you know, and so this is bad that this comes out. Although I got to say I'm surprised to some degree how much you know, they've I mean nor if the Nord Stream bombing didn't you know, like do it. I don't know if just like some special forces being embedded there is going to like, you know, create some big escalation.The Jerogan experience. The leaked document. Like, what was your thoughts on that? Because the whole thing was crazy that this guy had access to it. That, and I guess he was showing it to his friends or something? Is that what it was? Well, it seems that way. You know, a lot of people kind of were criticizing the guy and they were kind of saying like, well, look, this guy is no Ed Snowden. I mean, he didn't like take this to Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian to have him vet through it and properly disclose it. He's like bragging to friends on a Discord server or whatever. And essentially that seems right to me. Like that does kind of seem like what happened. But again, like that's not the interesting story here. The interesting story isn't like what this guy's deal was or what his motives were. The story is like, oh, the government's lying to you again. And also that it's they have this information that they claim is so vital that it's so horrible. He leaked it and yet you're so reckless with it that you know, it's like it's funny. I remember Glenn Greenwald making this point when people would talk about like people were at the National Security apparatus or whatever would be talking about how how reckless it is that Snowden just like gave all of this information out and you're like, well, then weren't you pretty reckless too? Because like if this information is so vital, you didn't even know it was gone. Right. They didn't even know it was gone until the Guardian published it and then they were like, oh, I guess this guy took all of our documents. What another of what did the documents say? Well, just right before that, one of the other real interesting thing is that they came out. So a couple days after the leak first, like was getting reported, the Reuters had a piece an article where they had three high-level US officials under anonymity said that you'll never believe this, Joe. It had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. And so isn't it just amazing that they'll go and then like two days later, they completely gave up on that and went, let's just smear the kid who did it. You know, like I forget all that stuff. There were some some interesting revelations from from the documents, things like they they're evidently there are NATO and US military embedded in Ukraine. Like help assisting them basically, which is which is pretty dangerous. Western Special Forces operating inside Ukraine. One document dated 23 March refers to the presence of a small number of Western Special Forces operating inside Ukraine without specifying their activities or location. The UK has the largest contingent 50 followed by Latvia 17 France 15 and the US 14 the Netherlands one Western governments. Typically refrain from commenting on such sensitive matters. But this detail is likely to be seized upon by Moscow, which has in recent months argued that is not just confronting Ukraine but NATO as well. And essentially look, this was the I think what when Putin ultimately decided to invade Ukraine last year. I think basically what he concluded was that they did it. They brought Ukraine into NATO even though Ukraine is not an official NATO country at this point. They backed the coup that overthrew the Democratic the democratically elected government under Yanukovych. They poured weapons into the country and they were doing joint training exercises with NATO and the Ukrainian military and I think Vladimir Putin was basically like we told them this was our brightest of red lines and they crossed it and I got to do something now. I'm not saying he should have done this. There's other things he could have done. There's lots of things. I mean, I don't know exactly you get creative, but he could have cut off all natural gas to Europe. He could have dropped a nuke in the ocean. I mean, he could have done something before he did this, you know, but he basically concluded that Ukraine is de facto a member of NATO. And if you look at the way we're responding to this whole thing, he's kind of right. I mean like we're backing them all the way because they were invaded. That's what we're supposed to do to a NATO country, you know, and so this is bad that this comes out. Although I got to say I'm surprised to some degree how much you know, they've I mean nor if the Nord Stream bombing didn't you know, like do it. I don't know if just like some special forces being embedded there is going to like, you know, create some big escalation.