CIA

CIA Versus Trump

Featured image To the many fine people of the Central Intelligence Agency who still produce, unseen by outsiders and quietly, apolitical intelligence in support of American national decision-makers. That is the dedication to Neutering the CIA: Why U.S. Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences by John A. Gentry, something of a company man. He started as a CIA analyst in 1986, took “another job” with the CIA soon after, and left the »

Inside the CIA

Featured image The media are gingerly reporting the story broken by the Financial Times. As the New York Post puts it: A high-ranking CIA official boldly shared multiple pro-Palestinian images on her Facebook page just two weeks after Hamas launched its bloody surprise attack on Israel — while President Biden was touring the Jewish state to pledge the US’s allegiance to the nation. The CIA’s associate deputy director for analysis changed her »

CIA Laptop Dancing and Other Follies

Featured image The CIA was created after World War II to prevent another Pearl Harbor attack, writes Charles S. Faddis, a former CIA operations officer and Middle East station chief. Faddis believes the agency “no longer works,” an easy case to make but not exactly news. Al Qaeda was well known but “we had not a single source inside that organization capable of warning us of the 9/11 attacks that would kill »

Intelligence Failure

Featured image There appears to have been a considerable intelligence failure in the runup to the invasion some are calling “Israel’s 9/11.” While the Israelis sort it out, Americans might look back at the actual 9/11, which the vaunted Central Intelligence Agency failed to detect or prevent. The nation was “unprepared,” notes the official 9/11 Commission Report, which leaves little doubt that the CIA underperformed. After the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. »

The spy who came in from the sold

Featured image Earlier this week House Committee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (Select Subcommittee on the Permanent Select Committee on Coronavirus Pandemic) and Mike Turner (Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) released issued a press release that reads as follows: Staff on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offered six analysts significant monetary incentives to »

Deep state of denial

Featured image Oh, by the way, Gary Shapley’s testimony establishes that the FBI confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop as far back as November 2019. The Washington Free Beacon covered that aspect of Shapley’s testimony last week in this story by Andrew Kerr and Joe Simonson. The Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross follows up with this sidebar to Shapley’s testimony today: The former spies and Biden campaign aides who smeared Hunter Biden’s »

Directly from the deep state to you: The report

Featured image House committee chairmen Jim Jordan (Judiciary and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government) and and Michael Turner (Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) have released the 64-page joint interim staff report “The Hunter Biden Statement: How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters.” The link goes to the report they released today. I summarized stories previewing the report this morning in “Directly »

Directly from the Deep State to you

Featured image Rep. Jim Jordan’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is set to release its report on the letter of the Deep State 51 today. The Federalist’s Sean Davis obtained a copy of the report and previews it here. The invaluable Miranda Devine devotes a New York Post column to the findings here. The Daily Mail has more here. Among the report’s findings: The CIA fast-tracked approval of »

US Report

Featured image Last week, I was on the “U.S. Report” program on Sky News in Australia, with host James Morrow. James is also one of the hosts of Outsiders. U.S. Report, obviously, focuses on news from America. It was a fun appearance. We talked about the Dirty 51, Joe Biden’s ineptitude, the 2024 race, and Critical Race Theory in American schools. I think you will enjoy it: »

Weaponization Under Fire

Featured image Tomorrow the House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will hold its first hearing, chaired by Jim Jordan. The existence of this committee illustrates the vital difference between a narrow minority and a narrow majority. Under Democratic rule, “weaponization” of federal agencies was applauded, not investigated. The committee’s name refers in part to the Democrats’ deployment of the FBI and CIA as partisan agents. Donald »

Zawahiri zapped

Featured image President Biden took off his mask and emerged from isolation to announce that the CIA had zapped al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zahawiri in a drone strike conducted by the CIA on his Kabul balcony over this past weekend. The White House has posted the transcript of Biden’s remarks here. Reuters has a good story on the drone strike here and more on the operation here. Biden said the strike occurred »

Durham for dummies

Featured image In his Sunday morning email editorial report, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot writes: “For an example of media conformity in action, look at the lock-step reaction to Special Counsel John Durham’s recent court filing. Nothing to see here, so please don’t look, said the New York Times, whose line was picked up seriatim by Axios, Politico, and the rest.” Gigot briefly provides background and poses the relevant »

Document this

Featured image The Russia hoax must be the biggest political story of the past five years. I certainly have treated it as such. The details added by Special Counsel John Durham in his filing last week in the case of Michael Sussman add slightly to the story and to the questions surrounding it. The unnamed “tech executive” at the heart of the filing is Alex Joffe. On Monday Joffe released a statement »

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured image Ammo Grrrll declares: I AM DEFINITELY CIA MATERIAL. She writes: I am taking a wee break from the travelogue, even though we have (in the beautiful poetry of Robert Frost) “miles to go before we sleep…in our own bed.” We will have much to discuss when I return to the topic. But for now… By now we have all seen the mortifying ad for CIA recruitment or public relations or »

Is the CIA Still Covering Up?

Featured image The Federalist has a story about the CIA continuing to frustrate any investigation into America’s worst-ever scandal, the Russia hoax. It is the kind of story I often don’t pay attention to, as it is based on the accounts of “multiple senior U.S. officials.” So take it for what it is worth. But Sean Davis has a good track record, I think, and the story has a ring of plausibility »

Aaron Maté: The Brennan Dossier

Featured image We await the administration of justice to the wrongdoers who perpetrated and peddled the Obama administration’s Russia hoax. RealClearInvestigations continues to chronicle the wrongdoing in an important series of studies, of which Aaron Maté’s “The Brennan Dossier: All About a Prime Mover of Russiagate” is only the most recent. Maté has written for a variety of left-wing outlets, but this is nevertheless a first-rate column consistent with the high level »

Kim Strassel Tells It Like It Is

Featured image Kim Strassel is popular with readers of the Wall Street Journal, where she has been a member of the editorial board since 2005 and author of the Potomac Watch column since 2007. She has written two books, The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech, and Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America, which will be published next week. Tonight Kim spoke at Center of »