Monday, July 10, 2017

Intelligence Community Loyalty

I believe that CIA Director John Brennan corrupted the CIA and made it an arm of the Democratic Party.  Brennan was a strong supporter of his boss, Obama, and used his position to further Obama’s goal, which was to get Hillary Clinton elected President.  When the Democrats failed to elect Hillary in one of the greatest election debacles ever, the remaining Democrats used the intelligence committees in the House and the Senate to leverage the CIA’s Hillary-love into a way to remove Trump from office.  The Democrats are trying to use the CIA to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and there appear to be senior officials still at CIA who support this goal.  If Trump ever gets around to appointing his own ambassadors, he may find that there is disagreement between embassy station chiefs and his ambassadors.  The policy independence of station chiefs was illustrated to some extent by the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” in which the Pakistan station chief refused to cooperate with Congressman Wilson, because he thought Wilson’s ideas on Afghanistan policy were wrong.    

The CIA, like the State Department Foreign Service, attracts a fair number of elite intellectuals from the political establishment who want to play a role on the world stage.  As a result, many senior CIA officials in the clandestine service and intelligence analysis would tend to be supporters of progressive Democratic policies and candidates, e.g., Hillary Clinton.  On the other hand, CIA paramilitary types would probably be Trump supporters, but they are not going to be senior CIA officials.  As a result, the CIA tilts strongly left, and that tilt is reflected in its intelligence reporting and analysis.  

Therefore, I think Trump is correct not to trust the CIA.  I think the CIA is out to get him.  The other day on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough kept referring to “intelligence patriots.”  I think this is just liberal propaganda from Joe’s liberal MSNBC network.  Because the CIA shares his hatred of Trump, he sees them as “patriots,” when in fact they are just political allies.  

Of course there is a lot of intelligence produced by the CIA that is not politicized -- sizes of armies, capabilities of weapons, even political situations in second-tier countries.  There are a lot of smart people producing useful intelligence. But the whole business of Russian involvement in the US, and particularly the election hacking, is politically motivated and untrustworthy.  Almost open rebellion by the leading intelligence agency against the President is dangerous for political stability in the US, and Democrats in Congress are exacerbating this tension by encouraging the CIA to provide them dirt on the Trump administration.    

When John Brennan appeared on “Meet the Press” yesterday, he talked about treason.  Brennan said, “the process of committing treason against one's country frequently takes place in an unwitting fashion in the early stages.”  The clear implication is that some Trump administration people may have unwittingly been committing treason, a very strong accusation.  But Chuck Todd implies that the Obama administration did nothing in response to what appeared to be treason because it did not want to look like it was interfering in the election on behalf of Hillary, whom everyone expected to win.  

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