The Full Belmonte, 4/9/2023
Leaked Documents Reveal Depth of U.S. Spy Efforts and Russia’s Military Struggles
The information, exposed on social media sites, also shows that U.S. intelligence services are eavesdropping on important allies.
By Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Michael Schwirtz and Eric Schmitt
April 8, 2023
“WASHINGTON — A trove of leaked Pentagon documents reveals how deeply Russia’s security and intelligence services have been penetrated by the United States, demonstrating Washington’s ability to warn Ukraine about planned strikes and providing an assessment of the strength of Moscow’s war machine.
The documents portray a battered Russian military that is struggling in its war in Ukraine and a military apparatus that is deeply compromised. They contain daily real-time warnings to American intelligence agencies on the timing of Moscow’s strikes and even its specific targets. Such intelligence has allowed the United States to pass on to Ukraine crucial information on how to defend itself.
The leak, the source of which remains unknown, also reveals the American assessment of a Ukrainian military that is itself in dire straits. The leaked material, from late February and early March but found on social media sites in recent days, outlines critical shortages of air defense munitions and discusses the gains being made by Russian troops around the eastern city of Bakhmut.
The intelligence reports seem to indicate that the United States is also spying on Ukraine’s top military and political leaders, a reflection of Washington’s struggle to get a clear view of Ukraine’s fighting strategies.
The new documents appear to show that America’s understanding of Russian planning remains extensive and that the United States is able to warn its allies about Moscow’s future operations.
The material reinforces an idea that intelligence officials have long acknowledged: The United States has a clearer understanding of Russian military operations than it does of Ukrainian planning. Intelligence collection is often difficult and sometimes wrong, but the trove of documents offers perhaps the most complete picture yet of the inner workings of the largest land war in Europe in decades.
The leak has the potential to do real damage to Ukraine’s war effort by exposing which Russian agencies the United States knows the most about, giving Moscow a potential opportunity to cut off the sources of information. Current and former officials say it is too soon to know the extent of the damage, but if Russia is able to determine how the United States collects its information and cuts off that flow, it may have an effect on the battlefield in Ukraine.
The leak has already complicated relations with allied countries and raised doubts about America’s ability to keep its secrets. After reviewing the documents, a senior Western intelligence official said the release of the material was painful and suggested that it could curb intelligence sharing. For various agencies to provide material to each other, the official said, requires trust and assurances that certain sensitive information will be kept secret.
The documents could also hurt diplomatic ties in other ways. The newly revealed intelligence documents also make plain that the United States is not spying just on Russia, but also on its allies. While that will hardly surprise officials of those countries, making such eavesdropping public always hampers relations with key partners, like South Korea, whose help is needed to supply Ukraine with weaponry….” Read more at New York Times
Texas abortion pill ruling threatens FDA
‘This opens the door to the courts’ second-guessing any FDA approval — especially for drugs for controversial areas like gender-affirming care,’ expert says
“Friday’s dueling decisions over a key abortion drug thrust the Food and Drug Administration into an unprecedented legal bind, imperiling its authority to approve and regulate medications, legal scholars said.
In Washington state, a federal judge ruled Friday that mifepristone is safe and effective, ordering the FDA to preserve access to the pill in the 17 states and D.C. that sued to protect medication abortion. But in Texas, another federal judge sided with antiabortion groups to block the agency’s approval of mifepristone, a decision that won’t go into effect for seven days, to give the federal government a chance to appeal.
‘It is totally unclear how FDA is supposed to resolve this because this isn’t the way FDA does its job,’ said Kirsten Moore, director of the advocacy organization Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project. ‘It shouldn’t have to say in these states the drug is approved, in these states the drug isn’t approved. That’s not tenable.’
The conflicting opinions probably mean a fast track for a legal showdown before a conservative Supreme Court that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion last June. If the high court were to uphold the ruling handed down by U.S. Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk in Texas, the FDA’s authority to vet and approve drugs, considered the gold standard around the world, could be permanently undermined, scholars said.
‘This kind of Monday morning quarterbacking logic would allow courts to invalidate almost any FDA approval,’ said Nathan Cortez, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, one of 19 legal experts who signed onto an amicus brief supporting the agency’s position that the pill had been properly approved in 2000.
The long-awaited Texas ruling comes nearly five months after an antiabortion group filed a lawsuit asking the conservative judge to rescind the approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions. The suit was filed by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that argued the FDA rushed the drug’s approval, failing to properly study health concerns over mifepristone, which it claims is dangerous despite a decades-long track record of safe use. The suit was filed on behalf of four antiabortion medical organization and four doctors.
The FDA said in a statement Friday that it would appeal the decision.
‘FDA stands behind its determination that mifepristone is safe and effective under its approved conditions of use for medical termination of early pregnancy, and believes patients should have access to FDA-approved medications that FDA has determined to be safe and effective for their intended uses,’ the agency said.
Ameet Sarpatwari, an expert on pharmaceutical policy and law at Harvard Medical School, said Kacsmaryk’s ruling is likely to encourage a spate of additional challenges.
‘This opens the door to the courts’ second-guessing any FDA approval — especially for drugs for controversial areas like gender-affirming care, or PrEP for HIV prevention.’
He argued it would also instill uncertainty in the pharmaceutical industry. “This should worry every manufacturer out there,” he said. ‘They are now not assured of a uniform market for their drug based on FDA approval.’
President Biden expressed similar concern that Kacsmaryk’s decision would undermine the agency’s ability to approve medications Americans rely on every day.
‘If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks,’ he said in a statement.
The agency, in 2000, approved mifepristone, which was first introduced for medication abortion in the late 1980s in France. Used along with another drug, misoprostol, it essentially causes a miscarriage. Even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, medication abortion accounted for more than 50 percent of legal abortions in the country. In the United States, the standard protocol is to take the two drugs together — a single pill of mifepristone to prevent a pregnancy from progressing, and then a four-pill dose of misoprostol, about 24 hours later, to prompt contractions….” Read more at Washington Post
Texas judge delivers on the hopes of his antiabortion world
Matthew Kacsmaryk has long been immersed in a community that is staunchly opposed to abortion
“When Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk was a young father, his wife captured much of their daily life on a parenting blog that highlighted the family’s strong antiabortion beliefs.
One photo showed one of their children, a toddler, in a T-shirt that read ‘I survived Roe v. Wade.’
‘As you might guess, Matt LOVES this shirt,’ Kacsmaryk’s wife wrote in January 2009, referring to her husband. ‘I put it on her today not even realizing that today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.’
Now, 14 years later, as a 45-year-old federal judge in Amarillo, Tex., Kacsmaryk lives in the same antiabortion world he has inhabited his entire adult life, surrounded by friends and family who abhor the procedure, while holding the same views himself, as The Washington Post reported in February. Those perspectives, rooted in deeply held Christian beliefs, have swirled around him over the past five months as he deliberated whether to revoke government approval of a key abortion drug — a decision with nationwide implications that some close to him felt he was destined to make.
As his sister, Jennifer Griffith, said in the weeks leading up to the ruling: “I feel like he was made for this.”
On Good Friday — the Christian holiday marking Jesus’ crucifixion — Kacsmaryk delivered the ruling they had hoped for.
Read The Post's profile of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk
In a 67-page decision, he put a hold on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, used in over half of all abortions in the United States. Kacsmaryk wrote in his opinion that the approval process was rushed and that the pill is unsafe, arguments that have been debunked by leading medical associations. The ruling will not take effect for at least seven days, and it was quickly met Friday night with a contradictory opinion from a judge in Washington state. The case could go to the conservative-leaning U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and then probably end up at the Supreme Court.
Since Kacsmaryk joined the federal bench in 2019, many of his decisions have been wins for the right. In a practice known as ‘judge shopping,’ conservative groups have zeroed in on the Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas as a go-to place to challenge a wide range of Biden administration policies. Because Amarillo is a federal district with a single judge, plaintiffs know their arguments will be heard by Kacsmaryk — who was nominated by then-President Donald Trump and, like any federal judge, is positioned to issue rulings with nationwide implications.
(Kacsmaryk is also presiding over a lawsuit filed by anti-vaccine activists led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that accuses several media outlets, including The Washington Post, of colluding to censor their views on coronavirus vaccines.)
Antiabortion advocates celebrated both the substance of Kacsmaryk’s ruling and the language he used to craft his points. The judge referred to fetuses as ‘unborn humans’ or ‘unborn children’ and doctors who provide abortions as ‘abortionists’ — terms often invoked by the antiabortion movement. He implied that abortion is a form of social Darwinism, a theory used to justify the discredited and racist practice of eugenics, which aimed to ‘improve’ the human race through planned breeding based on genetic traits….” Read more at Washington Post
Texas Governor Says He Plans to Pardon Man Convicted of Killing Protester
Gov. Greg Abbott said he would forgo a prison sentence for Daniel S. Perry, who was convicted on Friday in the murder of Garrett Foster at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020.
April 8, 2023
“Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Saturday that he would pardon a man who was convicted on Friday of murdering a protester in Austin, as long as a state board brought such a request to his desk.
The announcement from the governor directly places the fate of Daniel S. Perry, who was found guilty of killing Garrett Foster, 28, at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020, in the hands of the Board of Pardons and Paroles.
The board’s members, who are appointed by the governor, determine who should be granted a pardon. Mr. Perry faces a sentence of life in prison.
‘Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney,’ Mr. Abbott wrote on Twitter.
“I look forward to approving the board’s pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk,” he added.
A pardon for Mr. Perry would free him from a prison sentence, allow him to vote and restore his right to serve on a jury.
The governor’s statement came a day after Matt Rinaldi, the chairman of the Republican Party in Texas, expressed his disdain for the verdict, saying that “this case should have never been prosecuted” and that a pardon from the governor was “in order.”
Mr. Abbott’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday night.
The potential pardon of Mr. Perry threatens to undermine the Travis County District Attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case.
This week, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill in the State Senate that would curtail the power of elected prosecutors, particularly those in left-leaning counties who decline to pursue certain cases, like some related to abortion bans.
The Travis County District Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Saturday.
On July 25, 2020, Mr. Perry, an active-duty U.S. Army sergeant, was working as a driver for the ride-hailing company Uber when he drove toward a crowd of marchers in Austin and came to a stop, the police said at the time.
Mr. Foster, a former aircraft mechanic for the U.S. Air Force who wore a bandanna on his face and carried an AK-47-style rifle on a strap in front of him, approached the vehicle, the authorities said.
Lawyers for Mr. Perry said during the trial that Mr. Foster then threatened Mr. Perry by pointing his weapon at their client.
They argued that, when Mr. Perry shot Mr. Foster, he was acting in self-defense. But prosecutors said that Mr. Perry had instigated the episode.
During the trial, prosecutors pointed to Mr. Perry’s social media posts as evidence, such as when he wrote that he might ‘kill a few people on my way to work; they are rioting outside my apartment complex,’ The Austin American-Statesman reported.
The jury unanimously voted to convict Mr. Perry. The law office of Doug O’Connell, which represented Mr. Perry, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
After the verdict was read, Mr. Perry slumped his shoulders, hid his head and cried, according to the television station KXAN, which posted video clips of the trial.
Ryan Foster, the brother of Garrett Foster, told The American-Statesman that Mr. Perry should not be pardoned….” Read more at New York Times
At a Flooded Augusta National, Koepka Builds a Lead and Woods Sinks
Third-round play was suspended midafternoon Saturday. Koepka was alone atop the leaderboard, and Woods was at the bottom. Twenty-two strokes separated them.
By Alan Blinder and Bill Pennington
“AUGUSTA, Ga. — The raindrops tumbled toward the turf in sheets, rapping umbrellas on their way down and pooling anywhere they could: in shoes, in plastic beer cups, onto the famously — and, on Saturday, formerly — fiery greens at Augusta National Golf Club.
That last part was a problem, since ponds are no place to play a Masters Tournament. Even though he was merely on the seventh hole, Brooks Koepka minded only so much. By the time tournament officials suspended third-round play about 3:15 p.m., he was among only 11 players to have picked up a stroke or more on a cold, mostly miserable Masters Saturday.
‘That seventh green was soaked,’ said Koepka, whose score for the week improved to 13 under par. ‘It was very tough. I thought I hit a good bunker shot, and it looked like it just skidded on the water, so I’m glad we stopped.’
Play is scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday. Koepka will begin with a four-stroke lead over Jon Rahm, who trailed by two at the start of his third round. Everyone else in the 54-man field is at least seven off the lead and expecting a decidedly soft course….” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Benjamin Ferencz was the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials. In addition to convicting Nazi war criminals, he crusaded for an international criminal court. Ferencz died at 103.” [New York Times]