Putin Tells Dubya a Secret…Is It True?

Kyle Orton is hands-down one of the best Middle East Scholars and Historians of our time. 

Educated in the English Tradition, he is one of the top authorities on the little-understood Saddam Hussein Regime and its influence on Jihad and the Middle East over the past two decades. 

The scholars that understand this tough topic? Well, let’s just say you can count them on one hand…literally!

However, when it comes to Russia and Putin, he does make a few mistakes, caught in the milieu of Russophobia that has gripped the West since February of 2024. 

And Kyle Orton’s review of the now infamous Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin throws these mistakes in bold relief. 

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE 

I have to give credit where credit is due…Kyle Orton is a true scholar, not a hack like so many posers are today.

If he has a point he wants to make, he consistently brings evidence to the table to back it up, scrupulously citing copious first-hand and second-hand sources, and never relying on “unnamed officials say” as all the other hacks do today.

So even though I disagree with him on Russia and Putin, as I will outline in detail here, I respect his approach and his hard, hard work. 

We need more honorable scholars like Kyle Orton…even if we don’t always agree with them!

FOUNDATION OF SAND 

In “Discussing History and Hostages With Vladimir Putin”, Kyle Orton lays out his thoughts on Tucker Carlson’s interesting interview with the vilified Russian President. 

He’s no fan of Putin, and he’s no fan of Tucker, either, summarizing his thoughts early on in the piece: 

“Carlson had clearly misunderstood Putin. In the tradition of Western political pilgrims to Russia…Carlson has projected an image onto the Russian regime that meets with his internal needs, and it has been shattered upon impact with reality.” 

Likewise, he claims that Putin “views Carlson as a tool, in all senses: a servant of the Russian cause who does not fully understand what he is doing, a man unworthy of respect.” 

These twin premises regarding Tucker and Putin are the foundation upon which Kyle Orton’s analysis rests. He in no way shape or form believes that Tucker Carlson might be a sincere seeker of the truth, or that Putin may actually be telling it. 

Unfortunately, these premises are a foundation of sand, and this causes Orton to miss the significance of key moments Orton himself highlights in the interview. 

THE HISTORY BEGINS  

Orton starts out his observation: 

“Carlson’s first question was about why Putin launched the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Putin asked for ‘30 seconds’ to explain the historical background, which turned into a 30-minute monologue that began with the entry of a Varangian Prince into Novgorod in 862 AD and concluded with the Bolsheviks apparently creating Ukraine and transferring Crimea to it.”

Orton then slams this approach as one of Foreign Communist stupidity, compounding on Western Journalistic Stupidity, the twin pillars upon which his analysis rests: 

“The interview shows the limitations of Russia’s Sovietized leadership in understanding of the West. Putin’s mission—and Carlson’s, come to that—was to create the impression that Russia’s case was reasonable and Putin has been misrepresented as a monster and a madman. 

“Instead of scripted talking points along these lines to appeal to Russia-friendly ‘post-liberal’ and Leftist elements in the West, however, Putin chose to be himself, responding to a question about why he started a war with a lecture beginning in the ninth century. 

“Most normies will find this demented. Moreover, Putin is not a dazzling speaker; many are going to get bored and switch off before ever getting to the end of this interview…”

A DEEPER DOOR

To me, this analysis was very disappointing coming from Kyle Orton. 

Orton is a man that values deep historical context greatly, and has uncovered some incredible discoveries in the Middle East Counteterrorism field that many other far-more well-funded researchers have missed. 

But because of his disgust for Putin, he can’t seem to think that maybe, just maybe, Putin may be doing the same thing he himself does…providing deep historical context to understand his position! 

This opening error by Orton only opens the door to even deeper mistakes, however. 

BAMBOOZLED BY BIAS 

“Putin then gets into his stride,” Orton continues, “Claiming that the U.S. and its ‘satellites’ gave propaganda support, as well as financial and military aid, to ‘separatists and terrorists’ in the Caucasus. 

“Putin says he showed the evidence to President George W. Bush and Bush was unhappy about it and vowed to stop it. When months went by with nothing happening, Putin directed the FSB to write to the CIA. 

“The CIA apparently admitted the U.S. was supporting these ‘opposition’ elements and said it would continue to do so because this was the right thing to do.” 

Orton thinks this is impossible.

“It might seem crazy to suggest the Americans supported the jihadists in Chechnya, Dagestan, and elsewhere within Russia, given the free pass Moscow got for its ‘War on Terror’ in the Caucasus,” he says. 

“But Putin has made this claim multiple times,” he also observes with this attached citation being included in Orton’s original article. 

Orton’s analysis is a stunning example of how even the sharpest minds can be bamboozled by bias, as we shall explore in detail..

SKY HIGH  

It’s very strange that Orton, of all people, thinks this is impossible. 

As one of the top Saddam scholars, Orton knows better than most that Dubya had almost no control over his own CIA and State Department, much to his consistent frustration. 

In fact, Orton himself has exposed in scrupulous detail that the CIA and State Department were hellbent on undermining Dubya’s goals and strategies at every turn in pursuit of their own agenda! 

Orton has documented this fact in depth numerous times within the context of Saddam Hussein and the Iraq War, and he’s not the only one to do it either. 

Scholar Laurie Mylroie laid out this problem in depth during the early days of the Bush Administration in her hard-hitting 2003 book  Bush vs. The Belway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror.

The masterful investigative journalist Kenneth R. Timmerman followed up later in the Administration with even more disturbing evidence in his stunning 2007 expose Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender. 

And when it comes to Russia, the mountain of evidence is sky high that the CIA and State Department did the same thing to Duyba…as Putin clearly explains. 

“A PROUD MAN WHO LOVED HIS COUNTRY” 

It’s interesting to note that most reporters or scholars don’t look closely at the Dubya-Putin relationship. 

Look at the discourse coming out of either America or Russia, pro-Putin or anti-Putin, and you just don’t see this relationship ever discussed. 

The truth is, however, that Dubya had a close, if contentious, working relationship with Putin that he outlines frankly in his 2010 autobiopic, Decision Points. 

“He was sometimes cocky, sometimes charming, always tough,” Dubya recalled of Putin. “Over my eight years as president, I met face to face with Vladimir more than forty times…

“Through all the ups and downs, Putin and I were candid with each other. We cooperated in some important areas, including fighting terrorism, removing the Taliban from Afghanistan, and securing nuclear materials.”[2]

This candidness was based on Dubya’s clear-eyed assessment of the Putin: 

“Putin was a proud man who loved his country. He wanted Russia to have the stature of a great power again and was driven to expand Russia’s sphere of influence…Putin was wily…Putin liked power, and the Russian people liked him.”[3]  

Dubya’s account of their relationship parallels Putin’s account of their personal meeting regarding the Chechneyans. And darker revelations would parallel Putin’s account even more. 

OPERATION: BOILERPLATE  

The CIA and the State Department plans regarding Russia go back to the early days of the Cold War, when Russia was locked in the iron fist of Stalin’s Communist tyranny. 

As I have written about in a previously unpublished research piece from 2016, the Department of Defense’s Strategy to take out Russia was called “Operation: Boilerplate.” Formulated in 1947 and renamed over the years, the core tenets of the plan remained the same. 

It called for a two-step program: 

First, American and Western European Allies would raise up the countries surrounding ethnic Russia into an anti-Russian insurgency, separating them politically, culturally, and militarily from their masters in Moscow.

This would take the form of Ukranians, Poles, Kazakhs, Georgians, Chechnyans, and many others. Precedent for this was found in how Hitler pursued a similar strategy in WWII, a case study the CIA scrutinized closely. 

Jurgen Thorwald was a former Nazi who was the CIA’s point man in conducting this research, and he compiled the first-hand accounts from the Axis participants in his 1974 masterpiece, The Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler’s Armies. 

Second, it would firebomb the Russian heartland into an irradiated wasteland with nuclear and conventional strikes, making it impossible to survive in, much less conduct retaliatory nuclear strikes from. This would thereby break Moscow’s power forever. 

The nuts and bolts of this plan was never a secret to either the American Public or the Russian Adversary. 

In a special October 27, 1951 edition of the widely read Collier’s Magazine, this plan was laid out in step-by-step detail, complete with vivid Pulp Fiction-style illustrations! 

In the introduction to this piece, the editors openly stated the article was a warning to the Kremlin: 

“An appeal to the reason of Joseph Stalin and the men around him is the ultimate purpose of this issue of Collier’s. We believe that it is the most important single issue that any magazine has ever published. 

“Robert E . Sherwood has told us that ‘it is quite conceivable to me that (it) may have an effect on the course of history.’ 

“We sincerely hope that he is correct. And we earnestly pray that its effect will be to help establish and maintain an enduring peace’.” 

SHINE AN INTERESTING LIGHT  

This strategy was pursued beyond the Cold War. 

To keep Post-Soviet Russia in its box, the United States and NATO hit Russian-ally Serbia hard in the 1990s Balkan Wars, citing Serbian atrocities.

This took the form of us backing Croatian, Bosnia, and Kosovar insurgencies against the Serbs, even though many of these insurgency groups had and continue to have deep, documented ties to the global Sunni terror franchise of Al Qaeda!

These aren’t Russia Today talking points either: these facts are well-documented by scholars and security personnel who supported the Balkan Wars against Serbia. 

Examples of this include John R. Schindler’s masterful 2007 Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al Qaeda and the Rise of Global Jihad, followed up by former Albanian Special Forces Commander Lt. Col. Dr. Dritan Demiraj’s 2020 opus magnus Jihad in the Western Balkans. 

It should be noted that both of these authors are of the high professional caliber for quality analysis (the latter is a personal friend of mine), and both strongly oppose the Putin Regime in Russia. 

These facts shine an interesting light on Putin’s claims. 

THE ONLY CREDIBLE VERSION OF EVENTS

It is well known that the entire Chechneyan insurgency against Russia from the 1990s on up today has been a wing of Al Qaeda, and their goal is separation from infidel Russia to create a global Islamic super-Caliphate.

And in fact, many of the “Foreign Fighters” that flocked to Iraq during the 2003-2011 Iraq War to kill American troops were Chechneyans and Bosnians with urban combat experience killing Russians and Serbs! 

Consequently, it would make sense that Dubya would be very mad about allegations of CIA support for Chechneyans, especially during the height of the Iraq War with Chechneyan Jihadis killing Americans on the daily. 

Given the history of the above outlined 1947 “Operation: Boilerplate” and the 1990s Balkan Wars, coupled with the documented undercutting of Dubya’s Foreign Strategy by the CIA and State Department, these claims by Putin start sounding more and more truthful by the minute. 

In fact, they sound like the only credible version of events when compared to the above-mentioned baseline facts assembled by quality Western scholars independent of the Kremlin Narrative. 

STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH

A lot more could be said, much more!

But I will leave it at this:

Even the best of the best get it wrong sometimes. 

If there is one thing I have learned in a decade-and-a-half of studying this field, it’s that the sharpest minds with the greatest intellects have their areas of expertise.

And an area of expertise in one arena sadly does not always cross over to another, despite a history of rock-solid logic! 

Tucker Carlson, for example, is not a scholar of Saddam, Assad, and the Middle East like Kyle Orton is, and he has made some serious mistakes in this arena because of it. 

But, in a fashion that both he and Kyle Orton have done so many times throughout their respective careers, Tucker Carlson has done something few others have the courage or intellect to do:

He has gone to see what the feared, forgotten people on the other side of the world have got to say…in their own words, no filter, straight from the horse’s mouth. 

And at the end of the day, whether you’re pro-Putin or anti-Putin, Slavophile or Gold-and-Blue Flag Waver, Hawkish Foreign Adventurer or Dovish Die-Hard Isolationist…

I think that pursuit is something we all can celebrate.

And besides…who doesn’t love a good debate?

Sincerely,

Richard Barrett

02-10-2024 

Written at 11:14 PM, somewhere in the USA…

Sources Cited 

[1] Image 1 

[2] Bush. George W. Decision Points. New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 2010. Pgs. 431, 432.

[3] Ibid. Pg. 433.