Making Top-Secret Intelligence Public Is Unusual – But Helped the US Rally the World Against Putin
2 Mar 2022
The Conversation | By Stephen Long
This article first appeared in The Conversation
In the weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, President Joe Biden and U.S. national security officials provided the public with a running stream of intelligence of the sort that is usually classified. The administration announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin was assembling troops along the eastern border of Ukraine and provided pictures of that buildup. Russia had a "kill list," with plans to detain or kill Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other prominent Ukrainians. Biden said that Russia was going to invade Ukraine "in the coming days."
The Conversation U.S. asked international relations scholar Stephen Long at the University of Richmond to analyze why the U.S. government made the choice to do this and what effect it had.
Are these disclosures of very specific material by the government unusual?
A fascinating set of events played out in the runup to this war. There was the national security adviser of the United States, Jake Sullivan, going out in front of the cameras and revealing intelligence that must have come from the highest sources that the U.S. has, not just inside of Ukraine, but inside of Russia, and making this information public in a way that is unprecedented.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/opinions/2022/03/02/making-top-secret-intelligence-public-unusual-helped-us-rally-world-against-putin.html
