Tag: confidential information

Powell Makes Unexpected Admissions During Prank Call With Fake Zelensky

Ms. Cat

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell made several bizarre, if not shocking, admissions during a prank call with two Russians posing as Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, where they discussed topics ranging from inflation, to the Russian central bank, to joking about having a ‘printing press’ in the basement and possibly setting up a federal reserve bank in Kiev.

Powell Makes Unexpected Admissions During Prank Call With Fake Zelensky

Lab-created bird flu virus accident shows lax oversight of risky ‘gain of function’ research

Ms. Cat

Inside the high-security Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two experienced scientists were pulling ferrets out of their HEPA-filtered cages on a Monday in December 2019. Another researcher, still in training, was also in the room to watch and learn.

Lab-created bird flu virus accident shows lax oversight of risky ‘gain of function’ research

H/T: The Most Revolutionary Act

Report: The CIA Is Directing Sabotage Attacks Inside Russia

Ms. Cat1 Comment

The CIA has been using a European NATO country’s intelligence services to conduct sabotage attacks inside Russia since the February invasion of Ukraine, investigative journalist Jack Murphy reported on Saturday, citing unnamed former US intelligence and military officials.

Report: The CIA Is Directing Sabotage Attacks Inside Russia

Related:

The CIA is using a European NATO ally’s spy service to conduct a covert sabotage campaign inside Russia under the agency’s direction, according to former U.S. intelligence and military officials. (archived)

‘CIA behind spate of explosions in Russia’: US veteran claims CIA and NATO ally behind sabotage

How JFK Sacrificed Adlai Stevenson and the Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Ms. Cat

How JFK Sacrificed Adlai Stevenson and the Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

In those interim years, the fictional story of how the missile crisis was resolved became foreign-policy folklore. None of the early memoirs by top Kennedy aides, such as Schlesinger and Sorensen, contained the real history. These incomplete accounts became the basis of the foreign-policy models and paradigms in political scientist Graham Allison’s highly influential book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. A full generation of scholars, analysts, foreign-policy makers, and even presidents learned the wrong lessons from the most significant superpower conflict in modern history.

Sixty years later, however, the Biden administration at least has a more complete record of history to draw on as U.S. policymakers and the world confront another time of crisis in the nuclear age. How applicable the lessons of the missile crisis will prove to be in preventing an escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war remains unknown. But the mantra of reason that Stevenson shared with Kennedy in October 1962 seems more relevant than ever: “Blackmail and intimidation never, negotiation and sanity always.”

Related:

The Cuban Missile Crisis @ 60 How John F. Kennedy Sacrificed His Most Consequential Crisis Advisor