The CIA’s "Secret" Moscow Trip & Putin’s Growing Problems | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

The Team House

This episode of 'Eyes on Geopolitics' examines CIA Director John Ratcliffe's unexpected trip to Moscow, analyzing its implications for U.S.-Russia relations and potential

Key takeaways

• Ratcliffe's Moscow trip was likely not truly secret due to open-source tracking of flight data, suggesting it was intended as a strategic signal rather than covert diplomacy.
• The meeting with FSB and SVR chiefs instead of direct talks with Putin indicates a focus on intelligence-sharing and indirect messaging.

Main topics

• CIA Director John Ratcliffe's Moscow trip
• U.S.-Russia intelligence dynamics

Notable quotes

"They wanted it to be known... they sent the CIA director. So it probably was about intelligence."

Conclusion

The CIA director's Moscow visit signals a high-level strategic move to counter Russian

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey everybody, we are back. Speaker 1 (0:01) Another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Jonathan Hackett, Mick Mulroy dressed up for us today. Thank you, Mick. And Andy just got off a workout looking pumped as ever. A lot happening as usual. Iran's kind of like in a standstill. You know, the Shredder Hormuz is open. No, it's not. It's open. No, it's not. Like, it's hilarious what's going on, I guess, in the headlines between both sides. I think today we're going to focus on, obviously, everybody saw CIA directors, Ratcliffe's secret, fuck, and I'm saying that in air quotes for the people that are listening, trip to Moscow that was basically fucking telegraphed the whole time. Like, all the OSINT accounts that follow, you know, plane data and transponders were following this guy when he hit Riga and then when he hit Moscow. So I don't know if you could really technically call it secret because, like, after it happened, there was, like, a spin cycle that was going on for, like, the last week. A lot of speculation as to what they were talking about. He met the head of the FSB and SVR. Putin wasn't there, but he was briefed right after. So, yeah, I mean, there's a ton of speculation. I'll throw it off to you guys. I mean, I'm sure you guys have been paying attention to this really tightly. Andy, let's go. All right. Speaker 2 (1:22) So on the – I got nothing on it really on the Ratcliffe visit. Speaker 1 (1:27) So I picked the wrong guy to go first. Speaker 2 (1:29) Well, yeah, let's Speaker 1 (1:31) – Speaker 2 (1:31) I mean, let's talk about that first. But I would deflect that to Mick, and then I'll chime in with some useless comments in the tail end of that. And then I thought we could talk about that excellent article you forwarded at D by the head of – Speaker 2 (1:49) of Estonia's intelligence service in the wake of the Radcliffe. Right, Speaker 1 (1:54) yeah. Speaker 3 (1:54) That's a good segue. Yeah, we talked about a lot on ABC this week. So, to your point, I mean, there's other ways to get the director of the CIA in that's much less obvious than going on a military transport plane. We have very nondescript jets, for example, that can do that. It's not perfectly... clandestine, of course, but this, I think, to your point, Dee, I think it was meant to be known, right? They wanted this to be something that historically they could go back and say, remember that time? Because one, you could also... do a phone call rather than take a 14, 15 hour flight for two hour meeting. So I think if you look at it that way, so they wanted it to be known. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but they sent the CIA director. So it probably was about intelligence, although the CIA is often used for sensitive diplomacy, right? With terrorist groups and stuff like that, where you don't want to get, you know, our state departments hands dirty, so to speak. But I think, If you look at most of the reporting, New York Times, it was likely about the intelligence they had specific to the potential challenge to a NATO country. That's my take. Why? You don't need to fly all the way out there to tell them they're not doing well against Ukraine. Like, why? You don't need to fly all the way out there to ask them to stop helping Iran. Speaker 3 (3:26) They know that. They know that we don't want them to help Iran. We're in a war with Iran. I'm not saying they didn't address it, but like there had to be something that spurred one, them wanting to put a marker down that we did this and two, sending them all the way out there to the little very. And I think the sensitivity of telling them that we know that they have, obviously we think they're going to do a major escalation in Ukraine and it might potentially be a challenge to a NATO country. And then we know it. I think is probably the most likely. Maybe they talked about all of it, but I think that's probably the reason why they got Director Radcliffe on an aircraft to fly all the way there. So what does it mean? Well, I think it's important to point out that we actually have just from looking at it from public reporting, good intelligence on what Russia intends to do. I mean, how we were talking about before the war, you know, in Ukraine, like we know they're going to do this, it's going to happen. They denied it and then they did it, right? So I think we must have good intelligence. And I think the point is, hey, whatever element of surprise you think you have, you don't. So now the whole world's talking about Speaker 2 (4:35) it. See what I mean? And Speaker 3 (4:37) hopefully it spurs the countries in Europe to start really amping up their own personal or their own national security defense and preparedness. Because it's one thing just to make them a lot of fancy new weapon systems. It's another thing to be prepared to use them. So I'll stop there. But I think that's likely the cause. And it's certainly, you know, if something like that happened, that's all we're going to be talking about, right? So a challenge against NATO, which we have a... treaty obligation did of it. Speaker 2 (5:11) So, Mick, it was, it's kind of interesting. He, you know, it wasn't a direct approach to Putin or even Lavrov, right? He met with the FSB and the SVR chiefs, which I thought was kind of interesting. So, Maybe it was a that's kind of a he believed that was going to be more effective. I like what you said about it wasn't intended to be secret because in this age of Twitter plus transponders and all these geeks who track commercial aircraft, it's it's impossible. You know, the days of Nixon and Kissinger disappearing for a few days to talk to China. You can't do that anymore. Right. Speaker 2 (5:59) So I, you know, I'd heard about, I'd heard about, because the next thing we're going to talk about, obviously, is this Estonian article and the head of the Estonian... Speaker 2 (6:14) Estonia's intelligence agency thought that it was specifically to warn off Putin against attacking a NATO country, which is probably, you know, Estonia. But then a couple of, I think it was the Washington Post and Axios and Wall Street Journal, everyone's been covering this visit, right? And so they suggest that that was not the primary reason. The primary reason was that... The U.S. had received intel that the Russians were saying, that Russian intel was reporting that the United States was exhausted by the Iran war, unable to intervene to support Ukraine, even if the decision was made to do so, and that Ratcliffe's mission was to disabuse them because they were the ones who'd said that to Putin. He was going to address that directly with them and say, hey, you're off target. And at the same time, Speaker 2 (7:12) indirectly propose indirectly because it's him going through the intelligence chain rather than a direct overt proposal that they open. You know, remember they talked about trilateral talks when the whole Iran thing blew up in February. There was this discussion of Zelensky, Putin and Trump meeting. I forget where, but it was planned and then it was all shelved when the Iran war started. So the secondary You know, the papers are reporting that the secondary objective of this meeting was to float a Trump-Putin-Zelensky trilateral summit again and is kind of attesting whether Russian intelligence could get Putin to re-engage with U.S.-mediated talks, you know, the ones that had stalled, without a direct approach that could be shot down and look as though we'd been humiliated. And then the third... reason, as you pointed out, again, this is just open source media, as Breen suggests it was, to warn off Russia against potentially escalating against a NATO country. Speaker 4 (8:24) I think also we're seeing, you know, at the highest level of intelligence activity, strategic intelligence, there's a couple of goals, reduce strategic surprise, reduce uncertainty, and inform decision makers. And here we're seeing a public element of a larger thing. So we're seeing the public movement of Ratcliffe to Russia. But there are also other things that the public is not seeing, such as the duty to warn. So there's likely if there was intelligence that were that's instigating this behavior in Europe, our European partners are probably receiving separate things connected to this activity, letting them know we see these things. We're aware of these things. This is to help inform your decision making and help reduce your strategic surprise. in case of a russian escalation so that there's stuff that's happening that's probably larger it's like the iceberg metaphor we're seeing this little small piece of an iceberg and there's a lot of other activity happening like sensitive diplomacy intelligence activity with our allies and partners in europe to help them understand the problem as well because even if we're not physically there in europe defending on the ground today defense isn't just a physical military activity it's also an intelligence activity so we're helping our partners be ready especially the latvia lithuania estonia corridor and Poland, of course, helping them get ready as a bulwark against what might be rolling westward, if there was to be such a thing. Speaker 2 (9:43) Yeah, and then, D, you sent out, so, I mean, to John's point, so, John, you're basically saying that There's always the danger, right? When it comes to interpreting moves, there's always a danger that things can be miscalculated. So it's a serious danger if the Russians are underestimating U.S. capability and intent, right, to get involved should there be a significant threat to a NATO country. Hopefully that Speaker 3 (10:18) was the message was delivered. And hopefully right after we said, we think you might have designs on a NATO country, we will defend the NATO country. I mean, that's what. And maybe that's one of the reasons why I wanted it face-to-face and done through the intelligence services. Speaker 2 (10:35) He's Speaker 3 (10:35) delivering a Speaker 2 (10:35) message. He's not speaking. And because the intelligence services reportedly are the ones who had told Putin, hey, I don't think the U.S. is, they don't have the will or the capacity right now to intervene should you want to do this, do X, whatever it is. Speaker 1 (10:51) I mean, you guys are military experts. Do we have the capability at Speaker 2 (10:55) this point? To do what? To defend NATO? Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:59) Yeah. I Speaker 2 (11:00) mean, it would take repositioning. It would take reprioritization. That's all. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, you take something as simple as interceptors and this long, torturous argument about interceptors. I mean, Lockheed Martin is still churning them out. But it's the U.S. government that gives Lockheed Martin the prioritization of interceptors. And recently that has gone to the war in Iran. But I mean. Again, it's a question of prioritization. If the government says, okay, now we're going to pull all our resources, we're going to put this Iran thing on hold, and we're going to focus everything on containing Russia and Russian aggression, of course we can do it. We have the capacity to do it. But it's got to be a deliberate Speaker 3 (11:45) decision. Let's not overstate, like we have in the past, Russia's capability. They're going to stalemate with Ukraine. Right? Speaker 3 (11:55) Yes. And we need to, one of the things that hopefully that comes out of it, in addition to passing the message and the promise of like, we won't stand for it, is we can now go to the NATO partners and say, let's prepare for this. Speaker 4 (12:10) Let's literally look Speaker 3 (12:12) there Speaker 4 (12:12) for. Speaker 4 (12:36) He is the single individual that can actually move all these forces through these different areas from 7th Fleet in the Pacific to 5th Fleet to 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, for example. So that would be, to answer your question, Dee, if the chairman is told, hey, new priority one is defensive Europe, go. It's very easy for him to shift those forces through those corridors and move them through their different areas so that they can be ready to respond to this new priority issue. And as it stands, they're actually closer than usual. So that would be a shorter timeline to actually readjust. And there's something called the Global Force Management Allocation Plan or GIFMAP that is basically a big chart, a spreadsheet where it's like a chessboard, essentially, like moving pieces around. And that global force integrator can instantly start moving forces, flowing forces to Europe. And they don't have to be in Europe. They can be offshore. They can be even further away, especially with strategic bombing assets. And we're talking about Russia. You will certainly see those strategic assets employed on a much higher scale. than they would be against a country like iran which is a middling regional power that does not require such strategic assets to be put against it and those assets were developed in the first place to fight russia in the in the cold war so like that's what they're built for Speaker 1 (13:47) Let me ask you, in a meeting like this high level, would there be talking about Russia stopping all the sabotage that's been going on across Europe? I mean, we saw what happened in Leipzig with the unexploded drones and stuff like that. Is that even brought up or talked about or is that like talked about like on a lower level Speaker 3 (14:07) and not such a high profile meeting? Speaker 3 (14:10) It depends on if it might have been part of the assessment of their intent, right? These advanced force operations, I don't know specifically. It probably would need to, since it was very concentrated, right, a two-hour meeting. Speaker 3 (14:26) And I'm told it didn't go well, by the way, pretty specifically. We didn't Speaker 4 (14:31) expect them to go, oh, you caught us. Yeah, okay, well, we're not going to do it now. Speaker 3 (14:35) So we knew that was going to be the case, but that's why they sent a red clip over there. And I tell you what, if you want a more definitive view of this, they don't treat guests well. But ask Mark Palomaropoulos. This idea that you're a guest. And therefore, it really reflects on you how the guest is treated, like most cultures. I'm not saying it's a cultural thing for us. I'm just saying it's the regime thing. They still treat you like crap, like keep you waiting, like waiting for hours and hours standing up and go here, go there. I mean, it's petty, but I don't know how bad it was. But I think they would probably focus it on, they might have talked about Iran. They might have talked about, hey, why don't you guys come up with a, reasonable path toward a ceasefire in Ukraine. But I think it was probably