Author: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

MEMORANDUM TO: The Candidates for U.S. Vice President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Clarity on Ukraine

At Tuesday’s debate, we strongly suggest you avoid repeating familiar “facts” that do not bear close scrutiny. Chief among these is the claim that Russia’s decision to send troops into Ukraine was “unprovoked”. A companion is the claim that Russia will not stop in Ukraine and that Poland will be “next”.

A constructive debate needs to be informed by accurate facts; we offer some below:

Unprovoked

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg inadvertently gave the game away on Ukraine during a speech at the European Parliament on Oct. 7, 2023, with these words:

“He [Putin] wanted us never to enlarge NATO… We rejected that… So he went to war to prevent more NATO.”

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals: Advice to US Vice Presidential Candidates”

This originally appeared on Consortium News.

France could be leading the American people down a path toward a nuclear conflict decidedly not in the interests of the American people – or of humanity itself, VIPS warns President Joe Biden.

March 24, 2024

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: On the Brink of Nuclear War

Mr. President:

France is reportedly preparing to dispatch a force of some 2,000 troops – roughly a reinforced brigade built around an armored battalion and two mechanized battalions, with supporting logistical, engineering, and artillery troops attached – into Ukraine sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: The French Road to Nuclear War”

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Throwing Good Money After Bad: Decisions in an Intelligence Vacuum

Dear President Biden:

We noted in our January 26, 2023 Memorandum to you that National Intelligence Director Avril Haines had expressed skepticism that Russian forces would be sufficiently prepared for Ukraine’s coming offensive. She said Russia was using up ammunition “extraordinarily quickly” and could not indigenously produce what it was expending.

You had just approved sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine. We wrote:

“None of the newly promised weaponry will stop Russia from defeating what’s left of the Ukrainian army. If you have been told otherwise, replace your intelligence and military advisers with competent professionals – the sooner the better.”

Continue reading “To Biden: Avoiding a Third World War”

September 5, 2022

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Ukraine Decision Time
REF: Nukes Cannot be Un-Invented, VIPS

Mr. President:

Before Defense Secretary Austin flies off to Ramstein for the meeting Thursday of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group we owe you a few words of caution occasioned by our many decades of experience with what happens to intelligence in wartime. If he tells you Kyiv is beating back the Russians, kick the tires – and consider widening your circle of advisers

Truth is the coin of the realm in intelligence analysis. It is equally axiomatic that truth is the first casualty of war, and that applies to the war in Ukraine as well as earlier wars we have been involved in. When at war, Defense Secretaries, Secretaries of State, and generals simply cannot be relied upon to tell the truth – to the media, or even to the President. We learned that early – the hard and bitter way. A lot of our comrades in arms did not come back from Vietnam.

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals: Ukraine Decision Time for Biden”

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Military Clash With China Over Pelosi Visit?
REFERENCE: VIPS Memo to You, May 1, 2022

Mr. President,

We, the undersigned, collectively, have hundreds of years of service to the United States of America in intelligence and national security. We have drawn upon this accumulated experience to communicate to you (and to the three presidents before you) our concerns over controversial national security issues of high importance. On May 1, we wrote you an Alert Memo on Russia-Ukraine. Today, we offer an even more urgent warning of the risk of war – including nuclear war – this time with China.

That Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible visit to Taiwan is of grave concern to China is well known. Indeed, you just heard it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, China’s President Xi Jinping.

Presumably, your advisers have prepared assessments regarding the extent to which the expressed Chinese concerns articulate genuine existential concerns or are mere saber rattling and diplomatic posturing. We want you to know that it is our collective opinion that such a visit by Speaker Pelosi would be viewed in the most serious light by China; that China would react quite strongly, reflecting the reality that it would consider such a visit close to an existential threat warranting high risk of armed hostilities.

Continue reading “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity: Military Clash With China Over Pelosi Visit?”

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Nuclear Weapons Cannot Be Un-invented, Thus …
PRECEDENCE: IMMEDIATE
REF: Our Memo of 12/20/20, "Don’t Be Suckered on Russia"

May 1, 2022

Mr. President:

Mainstream media have marinated the minds of most Americans in a witches’ brew of misleading information on Ukraine – and on the exceedingly high stakes of the war. On the chance you are not getting the kind of "untreated" intelligence President Truman hoped for by restructuring intelligence, we offer below a 12-point factsheet. Some of us were intelligence analysts during the Cuban missile crisis and see a direct parallel in Ukraine. As to VIPs’ credibility, our record since Jan. 2003 – whether on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or Russia – speaks for itself.

1. The growing possibility that nuclear weapons might be used, as hostilities in Ukraine continue to escalate, merits your full attention.

2. For almost 77 years, a common awareness of the awesome destructiveness of atomic/nuclear weapons created an (ironically stabilizing) balance of terror called deterrence. Nuclear-armed countries have generally avoided threatening to use nukes against other nuclear-armed countries.

   Continue reading “Intel Vets: Nuclear Weapons Cannot Be Un-Invented”