Larry Johnson: The CIA Has Become the KGB

 

My title may appear to be over the top, but hear me out. There was a time when the CIA, despite deep flaws and sloppy tradecraft, could be counted on to tell the President, regardless of political party, the truth. No longer. It is corrupt to the very top and now should be viewed as an enemy of the Republic.

The latest revelations from the Intelligence Community’s Analytic Ombudsman described in a memo from DNI John Ratcliffe is beyond shocking. Rather than tell the truth about Chinese interference in the 2020 Presidential election, the CIA opted to quash intelligence that would have proven Donald Trump’s claim that the Chinese not only interfered in the 2020 election, but played a hand in throwing the election to Joe Biden.

Here are the salient points of the DNI’s memo:

The IC’s Analytic Ombudsman issued a report . . . that includes concerning revelations about the politicization of China election influence reporting and of undue pressure being brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence. . . .

Analytic Standard B requires the IC to maintain “independence of political considerations.” This is particularly important during times when the country is, as the Ombudsman wrote, “in a hyper partisan state.” However, the Ombudsman found that:

“China analysts were hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference. These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tend to disagree with the administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies. This behavior would constitute a violation of Analytic Standard B: Independence of Political Considerations (IRTPA Section 1019).”. . . .

“There were strong efforts to suppress analysis of alternatives (AOA) in the August [National intelligence Council Assessment on foreign election influence], and associated IC products, which is a violation ofTradecraft Standard 4 and IRTPA Section 1017.

National Intelligence Council (NIC) officials reported that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials rejected NIC coordination comments and tried to downplay alternative analyses in their own production during the drafting of the NICA.” . . . .

Additionally, the Ombudsman found that CIA Management took actions “pressuring [analysts] to withdraw their support” from the alternative viewpoint on China “in an attempt to suppress it. This was seen by National Intelligence Officers (NIO) as politicization,”

“There were strong efforts to suppress analysis of alternatives (AOA) in the August [National intelligence Council Assessment on foreign election influence], and associated IC products, which is a violation ofTradecraft Standard 4 and IRTPA Section 1017.

National Intelligence Council (NIC) officials reported that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials rejected NIC coordination comments and tried to downplay alternative analyses in their own production during the drafting of the NICA.”

Let me make this very simple–the CIA cooked the books because they did not want to produce the evidence that proved what the President has been saying since the election was true.

This is not a mistake. This is treason of the highest order.

This is not the first time that the CIA has produced politicized intelligence or has refused to produce contrary intelligence. But is it the first time that the CIA has taken a blatantly partisan stance against an American President and sided with a foreign enemy.

The CIA has cooked the books before. One of its most damaging acts of intelligence sabotage in the past was manufacturing the Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction fraud that was used by then President Bush to launch an unnecessary and unjustified war in Iraq in 2003. But back then there were a few senior officers who continued to conduct themselves with professionalism and exposed the lies of Curveball, which was a major foundation of the mendacious assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

I was an analyst at the CIA and saw first hand how politics brought pressure to bear on analysts to slant analysis. In my case, it was the war in Central America. I was the Honduran analyst from September 1986 to September 1989. I wrote frequently for the Presidential Daily Brief (aka PDB), producing on average three briefs a week for the President (Reagan and Bush). [Note, most analysts were lucky if they wrote one PDB every two weeks.] Before starting my work I had the honor of being trained as a new analyst by the legendary George Allen. George Allen, not the football coach, was a 30 year veteran of US military intelligence and the CIA.

He authored the book, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam. Book From his vantage point as a chief official with the CIA and army intelligence, Mr. Allen reveals specifically how American leaders, unwilling to face up to bad news from intelligence sources, largely excluded intelligence from important policy deliberations until it was too late. . . .

One message shines through his recounting of more than three decades of American policy-making in Vietnam, what Allen calls the “unwillingness of U.S. officials to confront reality in Vietnam.” Allen names the names of those officials. They included the three top Army generals sent to South Vietnam in the 1950s and early 1960s (Joseph “Lightning Joe” Collins, Samuel T. “Hanging Sam” Williams and Paul Harkins); the ambassador to South Vietnam in 1964-1965, Maxwell Taylor; and Johnson administration heavies Walt Rostow, McGeorge and William Bundy and Robert S. McNamara.

George Allen was in charge of the analysis on Vietnam during the lead up to the TET offensive. George, along with his lead analyst, were warning President Johnson that the Viet Cong was far more powerful than being reported by US military commanders in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland in particular. George was pressured repeatedly by Secretary of Defense McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and even President Johnson to, “be a team player.” In other words, go with the flow and back up the happy talk that Vietnam was well in hand by the U.S. military. But the intelligence from the field told a different story.

It was only several years after we pulled out of Vietnam that the American public heard the truth of the deception during a libel suit brought by General William Westmoreland against CBS.

Major General Joseph McChristian, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence under Westmoreland, testified at trial that when he had presented new increased enemy strength estimates, Westmoreland had responded that sending these figures to Washington would “create a political bombshell” and would “embarrass my commander in chief [President Johnson].” General McChristian testified that, in withholding these figures, Westmoreland, “in being loyal to the President, was disloyal to his country.”

George warned us about the reality of political pressure and called us to stand strong against that pressure. He was very candid in talking about his lack of courage in pushing back when he was confronted with this pressure. He had kids in high school and no deep-pocket financial resources to enable him to take the risk of opposing too strenuously and being left without a job.

What DNI Ratcliffe reports is different and more ominous. Rather than oppose a crazed policy concocted by a President, the current batch of CIA leaders and some complicit analysts chose to lie. Rather than expose the truth about China and its subversion, they collaborated to thwart President Trump in his bid to expose the Chinese penetration and manipulation of the US election. 

I spoke with a retired CIA colleague last night who was heartbroken and sick over this latest revelation. Until yesterday he still harbored the hope that there were still some good apples in CIA leadership who would put politics aside and serve the interests of the Republic regardless of their partisan leanings. He told me, “our old outfit is rotten to the core.”

The CIA is now transformed into the KGB of the bad old days in the sense that it is filled with political hacks eager to serve one particular party without regard for the welfare of the nation. The KGB told their Soviet masters what they wanted to hear. You did not advance in that intelligence service unless you played along. Speaking truth to power was not a virtue in the KGB. It is in that sense that the CIA has become the very thing it was created to fight.

This is a watershed in the history of America and marks a point that will make it very difficult for us to survive. Instead of providing the best analysis free of politics, the stench of the political corruption that covers Washington has now fully embraced the CIA.

Intelligence analysis, at its root, is more art than science. Answers usually are not black and white. There are vast amounts of gray intelligence and nuance. An honest process requires the analyst, and his or her bosses, to present the facts, good and bad. If there is dissenting views those are supposed to be laid on the table as well; not suppressed.

The IC Analytic Ombudsman makes it very clear that intelligence was hidden from the President and the Congress. We have been told a massive lie about a clean election. It was not. It was dirty as hell.