Disinformation artists have repeatedly misled the public in order to demonize American enemies and support more war
President Donald Trump on his first day in office revoked the security clearances of all 51 former CIA officers who had signed an open letter in 2020 claiming that the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop “carried all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The revocation hits some of the biggest names in the “former CIA talking head” industry, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell, and a host of others.
Many of these misguided intelligence dinosaurs no longer have active clearances, so Trump’s move is largely symbolic in their cases. But others are still very active, either as intelligence community contractors or as sole practitioners doing classified work for the Agency. They will no longer be able to do that, and that’s a good thing for the country.
As an aside, I know every single one of the signatories. Some are intellectually brilliant. Some are idiots. Some were terrific managers. Some were vindictive power-hungry dopes. But they all bill themselves in the letter as “individuals who devoted significant portions of our lives to national security.” They go on to say that they are also “individuals who see Russia as one of our nation’s primary adversaries. All of us have an understanding of the wide range of Russian overt and covert activities that undermine US national security, with some of us knowing Russian behavior intimately…A few of us worked against Russian information operations in the United States in the last several years.”
That all sounds pretty impressive. But the fact of the matter is that these brilliant and (self)important thinkers were 100 percent wrong, wrong, wrong about the Hunter Biden laptop. Not only did the Russians have literally nothing to do with the documentary evidence of Hunter Biden’s drug-fueled debauchery laid bare in living color on the laptop’s hard drive, these CIA experts showed the world just how little they know about Russian information campaigns after all.
Think of it this way. The signatories of the letter represent well over 1,000 cumulative years of CIA experience, much of it on Russia. How, then, did they come to this completely wrong conclusion? Well, they got it wrong the same way they allowed the worst intelligence failure in American history to take place on September 11, 2001. They got it wrong the same way they missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, and before that the way they missed every major world event from the Berlin War to the Suez Crisis to the Vietnam War to the ouster of the Shah of Iran, and Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
I would posit that the problem at the CIA is actually quite simple. It’s groupthink. All the smartest people get into a room, talk about an issue, and end up agreeing on everything. There’s no intellectual pushback. After all, it’s better for your career if everybody’s wrong, rather than if you were the only one in the room who was wrong.
With that said, perhaps I’m giving the letter’s signatories too much credit. Perhaps they knew that the Russians had nothing to do with the Hunter Biden laptop, but they put out the lie anyway to try to frighten the American voter with the prospect of an uncontrolled Russian bear roughshod over American democracy and to push voters away from the Republican party.
We’ll probably never know the truth. And I would note that the signatories couch their language in a very CIA-like way. They point out that they never said the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian disinformation operation. They said that it “bore all the hallmarks of” a Russian disinformation operation. When I was at the CIA, we were actually trained to write that way. We almost never came down solidly on one side of an issue or another. That way, you’re less likely to be wrong.
There’s an even more important issue at play here, too. Just as a matter of ethics and transparency, nobody who has a CIA security clearance should be on TV, on the radio, or in the papers telling people what to believe. I don’t care if the final product has been cleared by the CIA’s Publications Review Board, as the signatories claim.
I, for one, am tired of hearing the likes of John Brennan, whom I have known personally, disliked, and distrusted for 35 years, telling me what I should and should not believe. My mind revolts every time I see Brennan on MSNBC saying (figuratively), “Well, if you had access to the information that I have access to, you would believe…”
Sorry, but that’s nothing more than CIA propaganda. It was illegal to propagandize the American people until Barrack Obama legalized it in 2013 when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act.
It should still be illegal. Governments that propagandize their own people are not democracies. The signatories may want us to believe they are patriots. They may even believe that they’re patriots. But they’re dangerous. And Donald Trump was right to take away the security clearances that they have used as weapons against the truth.
For past CovertAction Magazine coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story and CIA disinformation, see here.
CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptions, orders and donations from readers like you.
Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism
Click the whistle and donate
When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.
CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.
Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.
CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.
We sincerely thank you for your support.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.
Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.
Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.
Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.
By using this site, you agree to these terms above.
About the Author
John Kiriakou was a CIA analyst and case officer from 1990 to 2004.
In December 2007, John was the first U.S. government official to confirm that waterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, a practice he described as torture.
Kiriakou was a former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former counter-terrorism consultant. While employed with the CIA, he was involved in critical counter-terrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but refused to be trained in so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” nor did he ever authorize or engage in such crimes.
After leaving the CIA, Kiriakou appeared on ABC News in an interview with Brian Ross, during which he became the first former CIA officer to confirm the existence of the CIA’s torture program. Kiriakou’s interview revealed that this practice was not just the result of a few rogue agents, but was official U.S. policy approved at the highest levels of the government.
Kiriakou is the sole CIA agent to go to jail in connection with the U.S. torture program, despite the fact that he never tortured anyone. Rather, he blew the whistle on this horrific wrongdoing.
John can be reached at: jkiriakou@mac.com.
Don’t give me that tripe that 9/11 was an intelligence “failure.” It was a roaring intelligence *success*. In January 1998, William Kristol and Victoria Nuland’s hubby Robert Kagan a co-authored a New York Times (uh…CIA) op-ed entitled “Bombing Iraq Isn’t Enough,” the opening line being “Saddam Hussein must go.” In 2000, they co-authored a report saying that America needed “a new Pearl Harbor.” The day after 9/11, former CIA director R. James Woolsey blamed Saddam for the 9/11 attacks, then Woolsey & Co. personally cashed in on the ensuing US destruction of Iraq. 9/11 was an intelligence *success*.