Like a group of cackling hens, members of Washington’s permanent bureaucracy and their media hangers-on are indignantly denying Kremlin charges that the U.S. and NATO were behind the May 2 drone attack on the Kremlin, while claiming they really know nothing about it, have no “assessment,” etc. Across the government, the response is the same.
This all sounds very much like the noise that erupted from the same crowd when veteran reporter Seymour Hersh’s exposé came out on the U.S. blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.
Interviewed this morning on MSNBC, National Security Council communications director John Kirby responded to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s statements about U.S. involvement (see separate report), by charging that “Peskov is just lying, pure and simple.” Claiming that “we don’t know what happened. We’re still assessing that,” he asserted, “I can assure you, there was no involvement by the United States. Whatever it was, it didn’t involve us.”
Besides, he continued, “we don’t dictate” to Kiev. We don’t encourage or enable them to strike outside Ukraine.” Later to CNN: “We don’t endorse, we do not encourage, we do not support attacks on individual leaders,” in response to a question as to whether President Vladimir Putin is a legitimate military target.
Meanwhile, Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Garron Garn told Politico, “[T]he allegations [by Peskov] are completely false. The U.S. was in no way involved.” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning that the Intelligence Community “lacked enough information” to make an independent assessment.
Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), said Russia’s claims sounded like “misinformation.” Senior administration officials told Politico they were working to confirm whether the drone strike was ordered by Kiev, was done by some rogue pro-Ukrainian group, or was a Russian false-flag operation. One of those officials ventured that “if it was Ukraine, we had no advance knowledge. We are looking into the report but are unable to confirm it or validate its authenticity.”
