On April 6, The New York Times ran an article under the headline “CIA’s Deception Plan Helped Divert Iranians from Missing American” by Julian Barnes.[1]
The article noted that, when two American pilots ejected from their plane after it was shot down and took refuge in the mountains, the CIA developed a deception plan to aid in the pilots’ rescue.
The plan involved spreading word that the airmen had been found and were moving out of the country in a ground convoy.
The hope was that the Iranians would shift their search efforts from the place where the airmen were identified through the CIA’s cutting-edge tracking system.
To further keep Iranian forces away, the CIA coordinated with the military to bomb the vicinity, as U.S. Special Forces approached the rescue site and saved one of the injured airmen.
Written at a time of rising anti-war sentiment including within the military, Barnes’s article is a blatant public relations piece fit in the mold of Operation Mockingbird, a Cold War program by which the CIA planted stories favorable to the CIA and tried to burnish its public image.
The CIA’s sterling post-World War II reputation was destroyed in the 1970s when the Church Committee exposed the CIA’s involvement in illegal coups, assassinations and mind-control experiments, and when whistleblower Philip Agee’s tell-all memoir, Inside the Company, depicted the CIA as the dirty enforcement arm of capitalism.
Since the 1970s, the CIA has worked overtime to try to re-establish its heroic public image through an aggressive campaign in Hollywood and revitalized Mockingbird media manipulation.[2]
The public relations campaign can be considered successful, as a 2024 poll conducted by the University of Texas at Austin determined that upwards of 80% of Americans perceived U.S. intelligence agencies to be effective in “accomplishing core missions” like “preventing terror attacks” and “discovering the plans of hostile governments,” while upwards of 60% said the intelligence agencies were “necessary” and “played a vital role in protecting the nation.”[3]
When Donld Trump came onto the political scene, he vowed to restore the patriotic culture of the 1950s, while at the same time embarking on a battle with the dark forces of the “deep state” that had corrupted American life.
The Democrats played into his hand through the phony Russia Gate scandal that allowed Trump to portray himself as having survived a “deep-state” witch-hunt.
The real Trump was always an instrument of the “deep state,” or hidden force in government that advances the interests of big corporations and Wall Street. His regressive tax and environmental policies that favor the one percent and support for gargantuan military budgets testify to that.
So does Trump’s support for heightened CIA operations and open advertisement for them.
This past October, Trump administration officials announced that the CIA had been authorized to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, which set the groundwork for the January 3, 2026, kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Afterward, the CIA leaked to The New York Times and other newspapers that it had helped facilitate the kidnapping by monitoring Maduro’s location in the days and moments before his capture, tipping off the Special Forces about his whereabouts. The CIA also produced the intelligence that led to Maduro’s capture with a fleet of stealth drones.[4]
A month and a half after Maduro’s kidnapping, the CIA took credit for providing key intelligence that led to the location of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the 59-year-old head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), who was killed in an operation by the Mexican military.
Julian Barnes again was the author of a piece extolling the CIA titled “C.I.A. Intelligence Helped Lead Mexican Authorities to ‘El Mencho.’” The piece discussed how the CIA had helped track “El Mencho” by obtaining information on his whereabouts from one of his lovers.
Barnes’s function as a vehicle for the CIA’s planting of disinformation in U.S. media is apparent in his uncritical reporting on CIA “assessments” about Russia and China election interference.
These “assessments” have the function of mobilizing public opinion against the U.S.’s two primary geopolitical competitors so as to validate a huge military build-up and imperialistic interventions.
When documents were released last year raising serious doubts about Russia’s supposed interference in the 2016 election, Barnes characteristically ignored them.[5]
Barnes wrote another one of his typical fluff pieces in February titled “C.I.A. Video Appeals to Potential Spies in China’s Military.” The subhead read: “The agency is seeking Chinese officials who are frustrated with corruption in the People’s Liberation Army.”
Barnes reported on how the CIA was trying to capitalize on perceived disaffection in the Chinese military after the purging of some top generals and launched a recruitment video featuring the CIA logo amidst the backdrop of a Chinese army officer complaining about corruption and asserting that he could “not let the madness” be part of his “daughter’s future.”
Barnes went on to note that the CIA had “published instructions on its YouTube channel and elsewhere on how Chinese nationals can use the dark web or virtual private networks to contact the agency without the Beijing government finding out.”[6]
It is rare in history for an intelligence agency to openly promote videos advocating for defection of army officers in a foreign country during peacetime.
If Russia or China were promoting videos encouraging the defection of U.S. army officers and their recruitment into the Chinese or Russian intelligence services, the American public would surely be outraged and consider this to be a hostile act legitimating retaliation of some kind.
Clearly, however, the Trump administration does not care about adhering to diplomatic protocols or offending the Chinese and, building off previous administrations, seems to want to sow conflict with them, with the CIA as per usual leading the way.
The attempts to revitalize the CIA’s mystique has been reinforced in popular culture, where Netflix is leading the way with an unusual array of shows focused on the CIA.
Among them is a documentary series featuring intelligence operatives sharing insider stories of spycraft during the Cold War, a spy adventure series featuring a CIA lawyer who gets caught up in international intrigue,[7] and a documentary series that defames CIA whistleblowers and covers up for the murder of a journalist who exposed corrupt CIA machinations.[8]
Each of the above shows goes well with the Trump administration’s media blitz and is part of the effort to bring back the romanticized image of the CIA that was discredited long ago.
Julian Barnes, “CIA’s Deception Plan Helped Divert Iranians from Missing American,” The New York Times, April 6, 2026, A6. The title in the print version of the Times that I receive each morning differs from the title of the online version of the article. ↑
The purging of critical views of the CIA in academia and the advancement of CIA-linked professors is another aspect along with CIA’s growing control in Congress and infiltration and co-optation of activist groups, the Democratic Party and left and alternative media. ↑
Older Americans were more likely to view the intelligence community as necessary. In the poll, 70% of “Boomers” and 68% of “Gen Xers” described the intelligence community as vital to U.S. national security, while 52% of “Millennials” and 57% of “Gen Z” Americans expressed that view. Only 5% expressed belief that the intelligence community was no longer needed. Support for the intelligence community was extremely high among pro-Biden Democratic party voters. ↑
According to a person familiar with the agency’s work, the CIA was able to recruit informants in Maduro’s inner circle because of the $50 million bounty placed on Maduro’s head. Beginning in August, the informants worked clandestinely to provide the CIA with information about Maduro’s “pattern of life” and daily movements. The CIA had Maduro so precisely monitored that even his pets were known to U.S. intelligence agents. The CIA also took credit for a drone strike at a Venezuelan dock that was purportedly used by a Venezuelan drug cartel. ↑
In February 2022, Barnes served as a conduit for CIA-spread rumors alleging that Russia had staged Ukrainian government attacks in eastern Ukraine and was planning to issue fake videos as a prelude to invading the region. The CIA’s intent was to turn public attention away from the real provocations being carried out by the Ukrainian army, with CIA backing, and to blame Russia exclusively for triggering the Ukraine conflict. In September 2022, Barnes wrote an article presenting CIA Director William F. Burns’ view that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a failure and had underestimated Ukrainian courage and will to resist. The article did not subject Burns’ statement to any critical scrutiny characteristically, or reflect that Barnes had carried out any independent research in the attempt to independently evaluate Burns’ obviously partisan assessment. ↑
The CIA was wanting to re-establish human intelligence sources since China killed or imprisoned more than a dozen American sources between 2010 and 2012 after their names were allegedly divulged by a former CIA officer who spied for China. ↑
Journalist Tom Secker, writing on Spy Culture, a website that analyzes the CIA’s relationship with popular culture, calls The Recruit “CIA recruiting propaganda.” ↑
There are also Netflix shows out there now featuring British and Israeli intelligence agents as heroes and Russian intelligence agents as the bad guys, like back in the days of the Cold War. ↑
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About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Uncontrolled Opposition.”
He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of six books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023); and with Dan Kovalik, Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change (Baraka Books, 2025).
Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency .
He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
Far right leaders Trump and Putin are unhappy that their friend, far right populist leader Victor Orban was defeated in Hungarian election.