In the push to avert war in Ukraine, the Biden administration used an unpredictable weapon, divulging confidential intelligence to reporters while saying: Just trust us, and ignore the backdrop of historical errors.
Dare to question the high-octane allegations, and you may find yourself lumped on the side of America’s enemies, as happened when the Biden administration said it had evidence of a Russian plot to fabricate a pretext for invading Ukraine by staging a bloody genocidal attack that framed Ukrainian forces.
As part of the propaganda effort, Russia would showcase a graphic explosion, featuring corpses and crisis actors depicting mourners and implicating Ukraine and NATO allies with Western military materials, and all caught on video, a senior administration official said.
Pressed for evidence supporting the claims, however, Biden’s State Department spokesman, Ned Price, yielded little.
“We declassify information only when we’re confident in that information,” Price said. “If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments, and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do.”
It was the second time that day that the Biden administration had shut down questions about a national security story with this rhetorical attack.
At an earlier news briefing, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, pushed back on questions about how children had died during an overnight military raid in Syria.
“Skeptical of the U.S. military’s assessment when they went and took out … the leader of ISIS?” Psaki said. “That they are not providing accurate information and ISIS is providing accurate information?”
On both occasions, reporters were dependent on administration sources for their first draft, but history shows how knowledge of events can shift over time as more information comes to light.
Not six months ago, in the wake of Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, a drone attack killed 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children, in what the military declared had been a strike on ISIS-K suicide bombers. Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, called it a “righteous” strike at the time. Later, an investigation revealed that it had killed an aid worker, with the Pentagon conceding that no ISIS-K fighters were killed.
In the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, officials in the Bush administration made inaccurate claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. And during the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, multiple administrations misled the public about progress, spinning a less pessimistic picture than confidential internal reports revealed.
This week, the White House pushed back on charges that it resisted efforts to move quickly in the evacuation from Afghanistan amid the Taliban’s rapid advances last August, endangering lives. Biden and his top officials have insisted that the Taliban fell at a speed no one could have predicted. But the testimony from senior military leaders about the weeks leading up to Kabul’s fall suggests otherwise.
Current and former officials say there is value to disclosing government intelligence early on. Public scrutiny can act as a deterrent or shine light onto events that may be clouded by the fog of war.
U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Kremlin propaganda could be used as a pretext for an attack against Ukraine. Russia has denied planning an invasion but has built up approximately 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, prompting concerns that forces could move in at will.
Washington hoped to dissuade Moscow from moving forward by drawing attention to the alleged Russian plot.
“It raises the cost massively for taking those actions,” a State Department official in the Trump administration said, though it can be hard to justify any results. “It’s almost unprovable. You can’t be like, ‘Oh, look, we prevented them from doing this.’”
A Biden administration official said the plot disclosed was one of several possible options under consideration by the Kremlin as it attempts to portray Ukraine as a threat.
The Trump aide said that Price should have been ready to back up the claim or offered a more conciliatory response given the heightened rhetoric.
“He should have said, ‘That’s a great question. Let me see if I can get anything else declassified. I’m not sure I can, but let me work on it,’” this person added.
The Biden administration’s responses drew complaints from media figures, and both press secretaries later tempered their retorts.
“Both of these responses from Psaki and Price are completely dumb and gross and only make them, and the case they are making, look worse,” MSNBC host Chris Hayes said in a tweet. “Sorry, but no U.S. administration has earned a ‘trust us’ on matters of foreign intelligence with regards to war and peace.”
About the reporter who had pressed him, Price wrote on Twitter that “clearly, he’s no one’s dupe.”
