'Nonsense': Fmr. CIA Officer on Putin linking Ukraine to Moscow attack

11 pass with this breaking news and some new insight into that terror attack outside of Moscow joining me now former CIA officer in MSNBC National Security and intelligence analyst Mark polymeropoulos what a terrible thing we have to discuss here we're talking about a branch of the Islamic State in Afghanistan it is called Isis K that claimed responsibility for this attack Mark but it has yet to offer any proof let me ask you who is Isis K what are its goals and why would they carry out a terror

ist attack of this magnitude in Russia sure Alex uh well Isis K and we can make a perhaps a comparison now with with college basketball with March Madness they are the one seed in terrorist groups this is this is the A Team wow General terilla the head of Central Command uh in Congressional testimony several weeks ago said that was his biggest concern in terms of external attacks outside of Afghanistan he actually said he was worried about Isis K attacks in in Europe This is an offshoot of kind

of the traditional Isis we all remember from kind of the the wars in in Syria and Iraq they have a they have a a in essence a base in Afghanistan several thousand Fighters and they are committed to not only attacking us interests but also Russian interests as well you know Russia has a long history of Oppression of Muslim majority republics and you know the northern caucuses Russia has fought Isis in Syria and Iraq so Russia is in their crosshairs and it certainly appears this is kind of the the

work of of Isis K so uh us officials told NBC news that they were gathering intelligence for months that Isis or Isis K was planning a mass casualty attack in Russia both the US Embassy and Moscow were alerted about the threat then just a few days ago as you know Vladimir Putin dismissed those warnings as being provocative statements first of all is it customary for us intelligence agencies to warn Russia about possible terrorist threats and what does it say about the state of Russia Security S

ervices that despite these warnings this attack was pulled off in inside their Homeland Alex great questions and and I think a lot of Americans would be surprised and and when we do you know uncover information about about possible terrorist attacks you know particularly against civilian targets you know we have what's called duty to warn and so even with our adversaries we would pass them this information you know we would obviously you know protect sources and methods so whether this was signa

ls intelligence or human intelligence um we're going to make sure that that's protected but we're going to pass them the the information in as much granularity and detail as we can and back on March 7th you saw a public announcement from the US Embassy in Moscow from the state department but also privately we passed this to the Russian Security Services now you know you can lead a horse to water you can't make them drink so how they action this we don't know but the fact is we pass them the info

rmation and tragically Russian Security Services uh didn't follow up on it or couldn't find the perpetrators and and you you you raised a really good point Russian Security Services are not 10t tall and you know they were totally incompetent bloated corrupt you know kind of in their assessment about the Russian invasion of Ukraine they've seen you know we've seen now once again that they are not able to protect uh the Russian people they're good at at cracking down they're good at cracking down

on descent but not in terms of their basic function which is the security of Russians yeah in his first remarks on the attack Putin tried to link the incident to Ukraine alleging without any evidence at all that someone inside Ukraine tried to help the attackers Escape across the border from Russia so look these two countries obviously at War over Russia's attempted take over but what could be Putin's motive for falsely blaming Ukraine for this attack so we heard today Vladimir Putin in about a

five-minute address you know he mentioned Ukraine he's claiming that the the terrorists were actually trying to get across the border into Ukraine there's absolutely no evidence for this and then you also see kind on Russian TV networks over even over the last hour or two um even some deep fakes that have been generated which seem to implicate Russ Ukrainian security officials uh and of course this is all nonsense why is he doing this one of course to deflect kind of the the in compon of Russian

Russian Security Services but there are some things that I think Putin can take advantage of with this unfortunately that's you know additional Crackdown uh on descent inside Russia but also the possibility of mobilization Alex don't forget almost 400,000 casualties uh uh from the from the the war in Ukraine that's that's Russian soldiers killed and injured they need mobilization perhaps something in the days ahead we would see is uh Vladimir Putin calling for more people to be called up so he'

s going to try to take advantage of it you know we certainly know it's n ense um Isis K has taken responsibility but they're going to try to pin some of this on Ukraine for really their own domestic concerns so this attack took place at one of the biggest entertainment complexes in the Moscow area just before a soldout rock concert was about to start what does it indicate to you mark that Isis chose this kind of large public location to attack as opposed to say a state or military site well Al t

his is called a soft target and so that means there's going to be a lack of security Personnel the people are going to have their guard down now incredibly us when they we provided the warning to Russia on March 7th we said we actually mentioned concert Halls this presumably was from the intelligence but when you hear about eyewitnesses from the attack yesterday there was no security um there was absolutely no extra you know people searching bags anything uh to suggest that there were there were

enhanced measures and so Isis is very as all terrorist groups are going to look for what's called a soft target where they're going to get away with it and amazingly enough again from eyewitness accounts Russian Security Forces police didn't respond within an hour to the attack and so you know ultimately a successful mass casualty event certainly was pre-planned cased in advance and again uh Vladimir Putin and the Russian Security Services have a lot of egg on their face