US had Intel of Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream project – Washington Post
reuters.com
reuters.com
this was never plausibly on behalf of russia and no country would do sth like that without checking back with the states - whose president btw basically just announced something like that would happen on television.
sometimes what you need isn't intel but common sense and some unbiased knowledge of contemporary politics and history.
The nutty accusation was America. Ukraine was doubtful on account of capability and cost benefit. From the American perspective, the "intelligence brief [fingering Kyiv] appears to have been based off a single source in Ukraine’s government, raising doubts in the US intelligence community" [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/d60ae893-c251-4693-ac75-4133bb05b...
American intelligence is far from omniscient or even unusually competent. We seem to repeatedly forget this, which regularly leads to mis-steps.
You’re describing a hired private vessel covertly executing a mission with Zelenskyy in the dark. Yes, this could easily have escaped American intelligence’s notice. We don’t patrol that pipeline.
American signals and geospatial intelligence are excellent. Our human and technical intelligence is garbage.