Radio War Nerd EP #361 — CIA-NATO Sabotage Ops Inside Russia, with Jack Murphy

Discount Jack Ryan does his patron no favors by saying it's somehow good that the agency can only recruit Russian assets in Africa where most of their operations are more like traditional colonial rackets involving arms and mineral trafficking managed by oligarchs, mob outfits, local gangsters and pmcs. Anyone with a direct connection to the state is there for a reason. Colonial Kurtz figures, Pariahs, drunks, and fuckups.

Now it does look like Murphy performed a clumsy limited hangout to try to muddy the waters ahead of Hersh's article. https://open.substack.com/pub/seymourhersh/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream Mark has to eat his hat now. Though professional help for his russophrenia would probably be better in the long term.

Who is the proxy nation? I kept waiting to hear a country named. The story is plausible, but it is a little thin.

Would love to hear an episode about the Falun Gong

Oh man fun reading how crazy the reaction to this interview has been, I gotta read the comment sections to the Ukraine updates more often I bet they’re even more unhinged Nobody knows what’s really going on, people

Guy who has committed dozens of war crimes: “The Soviet system just didn’t work”

RWN's need to widen their sources for this conflict. E.g. https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-ahead-war-ukraine or https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/01/what-if-russia-won-the-ukraine-war-but-the-western-press-didnt-notice.html

in the run-up to the war the thing I was hearing was "The russians don't want to go to war because all their missiles blow up on the launchers and their infantry won't move forward unless a general tells them to" and that was clearly false, so I guess I'm coming at it from a different angle. Anne Appelbaum was running around begging everyone to launch nuclear attacks because supposedly all their missiles were rusting away in their silos (no idea what her opinion on their mobile launchers were) so I'm sort of allergic to all the "russia's military is crap" arguments because they're so american

One version of the early war that I heard was that the forces headed for Kiev were there to inflict maximum pressure on Ukraine at any proposed peace conference, but when BoJo convinced Zelensky to back out of peace talks at the last minute, Russia's initial gambit failed, so they withdrew those forces and redirected them elsewhere. So while the popular version of Feb-April 2022 is that the russians were tripping over themselves like the 3 stooges both going and leaving north Ukraine, the more forgiving narrative is that these guys left because the initial political goal of forcing a surrender failed. Given that the Russians have held onto a 1000km front line with a force that was 4x smaller than the Ukrainian army until the September mobilization, I think people give Russia less credit than they're owed, since most americans think Russia hasn't changed at all since 1991 and is still run by vodka swilling meth heads trying to entertain themselves by holding a blowtorch to their nutsacks, or whatever wacky stories came from Russia to America back during the hell days.

personally I think the idea that there could ever be "moderate" rebels is a joke on its face, but idk what counts as "moderate" in Syria anyways.

"the only blue check guy to talk about this was the economist defense correspondent and he hasn't tweeted at all since he did that"

01:14:18 That's also the story of Ward Churchill.

If the NATO ally whose forces the US was using were say German then pipeline attack (by Russia) makes a lot more sense. "You attack our infrastructure and we return the favor." Wouldn't be surprised to see some utilities go offline in the US either.

RWN best show on earth

I do not trust this guy AT ALL.

Disappointing to see the kid gloves on in this interview. This is likely a limited hangout, and theres a lot of RWN drooling and very little pushback. The article is valuable but this interview illuminates little to nothing, and essentially launders this dubious guests politics with zero pushback

It seems to me that RWN have a moral obligation to have some actual fucking anti-war interviewees on their show. Especially after this shit show.

Ffs, this asshole is so clearly an op or an asset. And RWN is giving him a platform and politely agreeing with the insane hypothesis that russia blows up its own pipelines, presumably for fun. Makes you question what Ames is up to. You might have every reason to detest Putin and the siloviki in general but stooging for American intelligence ?!?!? Pretty fucking low.

Somewhere in Russia, there's a podcast called "Radioactive Nerd Wars" where Ivan Murfsky brags about shutting down all US commercial air traffic.

Boy I sure do hate listening to american military people boast about their conquests around the world.

fair warning that Glasgow is a fairly hilly city if you're planning on doing a bunch of walking

Interesting interview. Thanks. I guess I don’t mind so much when the host aren’t too confrontational with the guest. I’d want to hear what the guest has to say and not necessarily a debate. But maybe it’s because I’m soft. Whatever. I did, however, also feel het guest was very rah rah about the military. Many people are I guess. But yeah, I felt like that colours the way he thinks about certain things in the context around his article. I thought at certain points Mark and John must’ve biting their lips to not respond (especially that russiagate remark, surely). Again, maybe that’s because I’m soft. (whatever). But yeah, the term ‘limited hangout’ did spring to mind. (mine is a paranoid and insecure mind, though). But the fact that he said “the CIA wants Russia to know that they did it” made me think that a bit more. Regarding the pipeline. I agree with an earlier post, or several really, that the decoupling of Russian and German interests has to be the single biggest result of (and therefore a likely motive for) the pipeline sabotage. Might even be critical for keeping a sustained ‘united front’ within NATO as the war keeps going. But what could be the reasons for Sweden not making public what they found in their investigation. If they know who did it, then everybody else must know by now too, right? If it was Russia, are they keeping it in the bank for a strategic moment in the near future? What would that moment sort of look like? Maybe when Germany starts to stray a bit from the American direction. You’d think that information was propaganda gold. Russia probably can’t escalate. Maybe NATO just want keep the war simmering along.

I get a willingness to be skeptical of previous suppositions based on how dumb Russia’s invasion was (though as recently as the last ep it felt like Mark was making headway elucidating its internal logic—not that that makes it a smart move). But is it really hard to believe that the national security state from Dr. Strangelove, the one that, in the last two decades, made the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan look like Napoleon conquering Germany, would blow up Nordstream II? The pipeline was a pretty big bit of leverage for Russia. And Murphy’s explanation of how the CIA hands-off handles these Ukrainian cells could easily explain how the US got the UK to blow the thing without telling any other NATO members. You can’t backtrack if you can’t even receive Russian fuel. I have no idea who did it. Maybe it was Russia. But the way Murphy and our hosts seemed to think that was particularly likely doesn’t sit well with me. (That said, our esteemed hosts have everything to lose and nothing to gain by tending in this direction. So to those who are upset: I really think it’s just an overreaction to how horribly surprising Putin’s invasion was. No one’s going to be asking John and Mark on CNN because they had Jack Murphy on).

kolomoisky’s boy hero chose ‘to go down with the ship.’ As opposed to getting a Vogue photo-shoot and sudden ascension to A-list western celebrity status and a lifetime’s supply of green t shirts. And Russia did Nordstream. Right. Ok. Kind of a scripted feel to this ep.

A lot of comments about this episode are focused on how soft Mark and John were with the guest, and I agree to an extent. We should remember that neither Mark or John have been particularly confrontational with any guest in regards to questions or pushback. There’s nothing wrong with this, and if you’ve been here long enough you should know what they’re all about by this point. Should they have pushed back more, especially when the guest said things that went against stuff they have been talking about in this show for years now? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. It just feels like we’re wanting them both to be something they have never been before. It’s just not their thing. But, this guest was remarkably all over the place. I vaguely remember him from the earlier episode Mark mentioned, but apart from that I’ve never heard of him. And from what I can tell he wants to be seen as some kind of truth seeking warrior, but frames any criticism of US actions in the same banal way as most pundits, i.e. Yeh we continually fuck up peoples lives and entire countries, but we mean well. It’s the same tiresome take that this show usually shits all over. I mean the two most outrages takes were when he mentioned ‘Russia messing with our election in 2016’ and ‘it’s easy to dump barrel bombs on civilian populations in Aleppo when compared to the round the clock precision that the US does.’ I could’ve spat blood when he said that. Yeh, Mark and John probably should have jumped in at these points, especially considering their vast coverage of both topics in the past, but I’ve already gone over that. This guy is just another chest thumping rah rah US military fanboy who dresses himself up in truth seeking nonsense. Nothing new. Nothing special.

Nope, not a fan of this guest. I can barely stomach the cynical "war sucks, but so do people" take if the World-Weary Lord of Edge has useful analysis. But this was just fact-free misdirection. The "I just can't see the USS Jimmy Carter blowing up an ally's pipeline" bit at around 51:00 should've been followed by "yeah, what a fruit" to achieve full kaleidoscopic stupid effect.

Well, this was a disappointment for anyone who already read Murphy's piece. Left many questions unanswered (or answered unconvincingly). I don't get any sense that Ames and Dolan are now Russophobic neocons, though. They were just too genial here, and didn't press enough

I don’t know why the blatant US/UK etc motive for blowing up Nord Stream II is so flippantly dismissed in favour of a far fetched theory that Russia destroyed their own infrastructure. The destruction of NordStream II ended a considerable Russian mechanism of leverage over Europe during a winter energy crisis leaving Germany in particular no alternative but to stay the course and reducing the potential for European support for Ukraine to fracture.

Thanks, great interview. One quibble: I don't think Russiagate justifies NATO escalation of the conflict. Even mainstream media like WaPo are walking back their Russigate claims, albeit after 6+ years. And "Russian Ops" like Hunter's laptop have been debunked. Quoting John: "This war is an abomination".

Jesus Christ this man should be in jail.

This one's going to be a trip, let's ride

Wow this guy’s a pro

in the convo, mark speculated if israel would work for usa on a job. here is an example -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/al-masri-qaeda-killed-iran/2020/11/14/63b5590e-2626-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html

This is either a pathetic limited hangout or complete bullshit.

This probable spook has next to no credibility as a journalist. Read his website - Murphy writes that he is a proud former special forces operator, who loved his time in the military and does not regret his time there “for a moment.” Since his supposed departure from the government payroll, Murphy graduated Colombia University with a PoliSci Degree, has since scored fantastic anonymous scoops, runs a military-targeted podcast with a former ranger, and had a Discovery Channel TV show called “Tesla’s Death Ray.” I mean what, if the special forces are as dirty as Radio War Nerd says, is this Murphy guy somehow clean? You expect us to believe anything Murphy says with his anonymous sources and his background? He writes that after graduating Colombia, he started his website on “a shoestring and a prayer,” and hey look at that it blew up and he had his own tv show just 3 years later! Something is really really fishy about this guy, functionally Murphy has all the symbiotic journalist incentives with the American state, and displays similar behaviors to the DC Think Tankers and NYT editorial board that RWN loves to complain about. And he’s got the special forces, trained operative background to boot - and Murphy himself insists there is huge crossover between CIA and Special Forces! Very weird episode, odd and inexplicable behaviors from all involved!

Seriously terrible talk on the pipeline. Mark I’ve been a paying follower since the start and I’ve never heard you give America the benefit of the doubt with regard to its “allies”. It flies in the face of American natsec behaviour and it’s explicit anger over European integration with the greater Eurasian economy. You’re becoming a fucking neocon over this stupid war. As a long time supporter I’m disgusted.

Jack’s back!

Good interview. I look forward to his upcoming joint projects with Sean Naylor. Two of the best natsec journalists working today.

Damn this guest is cringe

100% uk blew up nord stream

The country is Ukraine or Poland?

This is going to be spicy