“Imagine if one of those Russian missiles was fired from Assad territory and hit a Russian ship. Attn: CIA.”
A Russian friend told me, “Can be no secrets in America. Somebody has a secret, they tell it. They get book deal. They go on TV and become ‘hero.’”
I think he’s right. The danger in trying to do something secret is nobody in positions to have such secrets can be trusted. Keeping secrets requires either fear, as in Soviet Russia, or a Christian and patriotic attitude. Somewhere in the line of secret keepers there will be a Godless liberal. Do you really want Putin to know we sank one of his ships? I don’t. It’s best if we keep well clear of the debacle.
Were such a thing to happen, it would likely be done by a select group of semi-anonymous insiders, as a “rogue” operation, leaving no trail behind. As is often the case, they would be doing so for their own reasons as well as to bias the outcome of the big picture.
I can imagine such an operation with 3-5 people, both Americans and some reliable Syrians. They would need the following information (all supposition, I have no insider information):
1) Location of the target on a given day and time, with intel from the NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) which is “open source” in the intelligence community. They could probably get “actuals” on distance, direction of travel and speed. Maybe even a satellite visual.
2) Location of stored weapons and a plan of how to steal them, transport to their firing point, set up and operate them. Also some distraction, like a car bomb, set off elsewhere.
3) Escape and evasion from Syrian response.