At risk of sounding like a cranky old man complaining about kids playing ball in the street in front of my house, I want to try to help the folks who have never worked as an analyst at the CIA understand why the current organization is virtually useless. It boils down to this very simple fact–CIA analysts now work in Mission Centers alongside with CIA operations officers and intelligence analysis takes a back seat to operational priorities.
How so? Let me take you back in time to 1985. In the old days the Directorate of Intelligence occupied the north wing of the CIA and the Directorate of Operations sat in the south wing. There was a time when there were doors separating the two wings–I understand it was in place until 1978. Prior to 1978, if you strolled out of your office in the Central American Branch, for example, and tried to go to the operations side of the house you were stopped at the halfway point to the other side by a locked door. Intelligence and Operations were kept separate. The Ops folks understandably wanted to protect their sources and feared that an analyst could compromise a sensitive asset.
When I came along in 1985, those doors had been removed and analysts and operations officers could, in theory, interact. But there was still a separation. The stereotypical analyst was a nerd. Not in the bad sense. But the majority of analysts were introverted personalities. The stereotypical operations officer was the exact opposite–outgoing, liked to socialize and bullshit.
I worked both sides of the house. I did two “internships” with the Operations folks in 1985/86 and then entered the trenches as an analyst. Analysts would start their day with a morning meeting to review overnight intelligence developments and identify possible articles that could be written and submitted to the National Intelligence Daily and/or the Presidential Daily Brief. At the end of the meeting, the analyst would head to the toilet where he or she would brush their teeth, floss and relieve themselves. I am not exaggerating. The mirrors in the bathrooms on the analytical side of the house were speckled with the results of flossing. What about doing a “number 1?” A number of the male analysts would enter a stall and close the door to urinate in private. The average analyst was not comfortable standing at the urinal chatting with a colleague while answering nature’s call.
Ops officers, by contrast, after their morning meeting or review of operational traffic from overseas, also would trundle off to the toilets. Few brushed their teeth and flossed at work (I presume most did that at home before heading to the office every morning). Male ops officers would stand shoulder to shoulder at the urinal and make un-woke jokes and chat up their colleagues.
I offer this crude example because it highlights the personality differences that characterized the Intelligence Directorate vice the Operations Directorate. (Note–I am not arguing that this was the ideal system, I am trying to help you understand the bureaucratic and personality dynamics that separated the two Directorates.)
Intelligence analysts rarely had access to operational traffic while Ops officers had full access to the raw intel the analysts were receiving. This created tension, especially when the operations side of the house was pursuing a policy objective such as supporting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan or the Contras in Central America. Analysts faced pressure to produce analysis that supported the operations programs and, in several instances, were not privy to what was actually happening on the ground in the conflict zones.
Let me offer one anecdote where I was a first hand witness. On Tuesday, March 15, 1988, I was part of a CIA briefing team sent to meet with members of Congress to discuss intelligence that the Sandinistas were massing troops on the southern border of Honduras in a location known colloquially as the Bocay Salient. There was a training base for the Contras in the Bocay. I was the Honduran analyst at the time and was accompanied by the military analyst from the Nicaraguan Branch and a representative of the Directorate of Operations who worked on the military ops in the Central American Task Force .
Halfway through the briefing, which was attended only by Republican members of the House, we received “intelligence” that Sandinista troops had entered the Bocay and were attacking the contra base. It was presented as if this was a modern day attack on the Alamo. Contra forces were fighting valiantly but being mauled by the more numerous Sandinista battalions. We ended the briefing and hurried back to Headquarters to try to figure out what was going on.
When we climbed into the CIA van to head back up the river to Headquarters, the Ops representative from the Central American Task Force began yelling at me and the military analyst from the Nicaragua Branch, accusing us of having helped create this crisis because our past analysis was not sufficiently supportive, in his opinion, of the Contra cause.
Upon arriving back at CIA Headquarters, I went to my terminal and pulled up the “intelligence” about the attack on the Contras. The intelligence told a different story. The Bocay Salient was very sparsely populated with people back then and the terrain featured mountains and triple canopy jungle. You could send an army division into that region and they would be lost in the jungle. Impossible terrain to move in force. The intelligence report from the CIA base camp in the Bocay stated that there had been contact several kilometers from the base with a Sandinista patrol. WHAT??!!
The members of Congress and the Reagan National Security team had been informed that a massacre, a la The Alamo, was underway. I received a phone call from one of Elliot Abrams’ senior staffers. Steve was in a panic and repeated to me the story of the Contras being wiped out. I calmed him down and read to him the actual details. His response, “OH MY GOD. I’ve got to tell Elliot.”
President Reagan had been briefed and was going to deliver a speech castigating the Democrats for not heeding his warnings about the Sandinista threat. And this is what happend:
President Reagan ordered 3,200 American troops sent to Honduras for military exercises Wednesday in what the White House described as ‘a measured response’ to a Nicaraguan invasion directed against U.S.-backed Contra rebels. . . .
The announcement, read to reporters at a late-night White House briefing, followed a day-long round of deliberations within the administration and on Capitol Hill on a cross-border offensive denied by the Nicaraguan government.
With U.S. officials charging the drive was intended to crush a Contra force weakened by the Feb. 29 cutoff of American aid, Fitzwater said Reagan ordered the action in response to a request from Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyos. . . .
Although the White House had confirmed an earlier ‘request for assistance’ from Azcona, it was not described as an appeal for military support. Officials said the decision to send troops was a response to a subsequent request, conveyed to U.S. Ambassador Everett Briggs in Tegucigalpa around 5:30 p.m. EST, the same time a high-level review of options was under way in the White House Situation Room.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/03/16/President-Reagan-ordered-3200-American-troops-sent-to-Honduras/2620574491600/
That, boys and girls, is how the sausage of foreign and military policy is made. This was pure theater. The Contra forces in the Bocay were in no danger. Yes, the Sandinistas had entered Honduras in a very remote, strategically unimportant area. But the United States seized on this incident to create a justification to deploy the 82nd Airborne to Honduras.
Now you may understand my cynicism and doubts about pronouncements from the U.S. intelligence community.
In 2015, then CIA Director John Brennan reorganized the CIA and brought the analysts and operations folks together in Mission Centers, e.g. Counter Terrorism Center, Counter Narcotics Center, Counter Proliferation Center, etc. On the superficial level this sounds like a dandy idea because analysts will now have direct access to what the operations folks are working on. But that is not how it works out.
Paul Pillar, a retired CIA officer, wrote a terrific piece about Brennan Rube Goldberg Initiative, The CIA and the Cult of Reorganization. Here are some of the key points:
Now the Central Intelligence Agency is being hit again with the reorganization bug, with changes that director John Brennan announced last week. The intelligence community has been subjected to this sort of thing at least as much as other parts of the federal bureaucracy. The most notable instance was a reorganization of the community a decade ago as the most visible part of the 9/11 Commission’s response to a popular demand to shake things up after a terrible terrorist attack. That change added new bureaucracy on top of continuing old organizations, and in the years since has given us little or no reason to believe that it was a net improvement.
The principal feature of the changes that Brennan announced is to move all of the agency’s operational and analytical work, and not just selected parts of it, into integrated “mission centers” covering issue areas defined either geographically or functionally. As with most other reorganizations, both criticism and praise tend to be overstated. Any change in a bureaucracy’s performance, for good or for ill, resulting from changing the wiring diagram will not be nearly as pronounced as either critics or promoters usually would lead us to believe.
A criticism of this newest reorganization, for example, is that it would lead to still more focus on current doings at the expense of longer-range analysis. But within each issue area there is no reason to believe that worthwhile long-range analysis cannot be done in the mission centers. Another line of criticism involves a feared compromise of the integrity of analysis because of overly close association of the analysts with operators. This would only be a problem, however, where covert action is involved. Although some unfortunate experiences involving Central America in the 1980s demonstrate the corrupting potential, covert action—despite the public image of what the CIA does—constitutes a small (and usually well-compartmented) portion of the agency’s work. There is a substantial hazard of policy preferences influencing analysis stemming from relations with policy-makers, but that is a separate matter from relations between analysts and operators within an intelligence agency.
https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-cia-and-the-cult-of-reorganization/
The last sentence is the critical point. Imagine you are the senior analyst responsible for Russia in the Mission Center handling the Ukraine crisis. Do you think that analyst is allowed to make the historically factual argument that Russia believed it was facing a future attack from NATO because of NATO’s stated intentions to bring Ukraine into the NATO universe? Do you think the analyst would be allowed to point out that U.S. and NATO military exercises in Ukraine, along with training of Ukrainian forces, had heightened Russian fears? The answer is no. Any analyst daring to push such verboten issues would be committing career suicide. Plus the analyst would be accused of undermining U.S. and NATO policy.
In short, you cannot (or should not) put analysts and operations folks in the same tent, so to speak. Operations will always–I REPEAT–always take precedence over analysis, especially when it comes to issues that are top priority for the White House. This is why I believe the current U.S. intelligence on Ukraine cannot be trusted. It is compromised by U.S. internal politics and by CIA bureaucratic politics.
I believe the United States needs a professional intelligence service that is comprised of analysts who have the task of reviewing all source intelligence and providing political leaders with an unvarnished, apolitical assessment of what is going on in the world. What do I mean by “apolitical?” The analyst and his or her supervisors are not fretting over how the White House or Congress will react to analysis based on genuine intelligence that is out of step with Administration priorities.
I also believe that the United States needs professional case officers who are skilled at recruiting and managing foreign agents who provide the United States with the national secrets of their country.
What has damaged, perhaps irreparably, the CIA’s ability to carry out these two missions is that the operations side of the house also engages in covert and clandestine paramilitary operations. Those activities, because of the amounts of money involved and the risk to the prestige of the United States, inevitably take precedence and put the other two mission–analysis and recruiting information sources–on the back burner.
A great example of this is what happened in the aftermath of the U.S. covert action in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The movie, Charlie Wilson’s War, captures the hubris of that event. Once our mission to force the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan was achieved, Afghanistan fell off the radar as a collection priority and the intelligence analysts lacked the information and resources to track the rise of Al Qaeda. Doing analysis on Afghanistan was a backwater job, with little prospects for promotion, during the 1980s. It was only in the aftermath of 9-11 that Afghanistan became sexy again. And, once again, the analysis took a back seat to the operational priorities of defeating the Taliban. How did that work out?
That’s a very disquieting exposition of what is wrong in the CIA house. Query: what can ever be done to fix the problems? The CIA has a lot of other problems, and seems to take public pride in being the big stick in US involvement with the rest of the world. It’s no secret that parts of the CIA just disregard the interests of what used to be thought of as the nation — however foolishly, that government ought to promote the general welfare, along with assisting the Chamber of Commerce and the oligarchs that literally own most of the country’s wealth and who write the statutes that a corrupt Congress and executive add the stamp of “legal legitimacy” to. Private interests seem to be driving the functioning of government, which never was and certainly is not at present “Of, By, And For The People,” taking “people” to mean the mopes who work for hourly pay at “essential jobs.”
You indicate the pressures to conform the intelligence product to the policy, as with Iraq and the stuff that has been force-fed the political economy after 9/11. What combination of interests and motions will lead to some kind of revolt of the analysts, if there are any left who take that oath to defend the Constitution to mean something other than protect the sweet setup that the heirs to the propertied interests wrote into the original document?
The iron law of institutions clearly rules in the present case. How can it end up being otherwise? Operators are sneaky, subtle and use whatever force or suasion to get their way. Analysts in their cubicles partake of little of the chops of the imaginary hero of “Three Days of the Condor.” So they go along, or get out of the way. Brennans and Bushes and that set will pretty much always worm their way into the big chair, from which they get to set the tone and over time, root out any small-d democrats or God forbid, socialists! The ratchet pretty much only turns one way.
Looks to me that grandiose stupidity and some kind of death wish are the ruling “principles” that are leading very likely to nuclear war and the end of most everything — each player in the US/NATO imperial drama trying to one-up the other in ‘forceful patriotism” and “toughness” against “threats” that are purely imaginary, or intentionally misconstrued and misrepresented.
Looks like the most vicious of pinnacle predators hold a royal flush in the game of bureaucratic and geopolitical poker. It’s pretty hard not to yield to an overwhelming sense of futility in this situation we are all in…
Back when the CIA was first created – plenty in Congress thought it was a bad idea.
CIA along with the FBI should be defunded. We got along fine without these secret agencies.
well reasoned,i cannot disagree with most of your comments.i would instead point out in a poker game with wild cards 5 of a kind beats a straight flush.
Not a royal flush, just the biggest pot and unlimited bluff, for the time being.
Larry, I wish to support you but the paypal and card options do not work for me. I am in Australia. You should try a different method for donations.
Buy me a coffee is an option. Have you tried that?
Just used ‘Buy Me Coffee’ – works great. I’m in the USA.
I just added a Patreon account. Search for Larry C Johnson. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=80288936
So what will be the CIA analysis be of Italy now having a right of center government?
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/melonis-right-wing-alliance-wins-clear-majority-italian-elections
Will they show this to be a crack in the EU, a rejection of the left and problem for the Great Reset WEF insanity or just spin it to be some minor aberration?
Chi ha ucciso Aldo Moro? (1978)
Italy – home to Gladio, P2, Brigate Rosse. One never knows with that country, who is really who.
I never doubted the narratives of either my government or the msm all my life. When Trump became President and called everything fake news, I still believed msm. I stopped believing msm when they attacked Trump on HCQ and chlorine dioxide. I stopped believing Trump when he rolled out the death shots at warpspeed. I’ve always appreciated your analysis on Ukraine because It lines up with other sources I respect. Pushing the official 911 narrative that it was ‘missed’ by CIA in light of all the videos and story of build 7, or the missle strike on the pentagon, the volume of whistleblower and journalists who were silenced, the warpspeed removal of the towers debri, the Sen Wellstone assassination, the vast information on that day that has come to light in the 2 years leads me to believe Trump did indeed fulfill a campaign promise to declass this information. I’m not buying your not aware of this.
Pentagon missile strikes and assorted other 9/11 Fud?
Ah, another controlled opposition agent to discredit Larry and other commenters as they discuss *real* issues and events.
The “jabs” are BS; certainly not meeting the definition of vaccine by any objective measure, totally unnecessary for the young and healthy (meaning under 65 years old) and apparently slightly more risky than covid itself for the young and healthy, but “death shots” is a stretch. No, I didn’t get the shots and neither did my wife b/c we, like 97.5% of the population, didn’t need to – and the shots are experimental. That said, Trump was politically pressured from all sides. He had to take the chance on the pushing through the shots versus handing the election to neo-Marxists who would ruin the country. Turns out the neo-Marxists were going to win regardless. Rock and hard place. Trying to minimize damage. That is sometimes the kind of choice a great man faces. Sometimes great man loses.
Anyone who thinks that Marxists, Neo or otherwise, are running the US really needs to get out their Big Book of Definitions and do a bit of serious reading. This notion of the US being full of ‘Marxists’ is a figment of a very overloaded imagination. ‘Marxist’ is just being used as the most horrible slur one can use, without any reference to the actual meaning of the word, and generally by someone who has never read a word by Marx.
Infantile.
So you’re probably a Marxist? It’s definitely pushing Marxism for masses and globalist feudal lords behind the scenes. Give it whatever name you like, it always ends up some animals more equal than others.
Eric, just because you raised that question I want to comment on it.
Some years in the past I read the bio of Patrick Moore, one of the „founders“ of Greenpeace. He described the moment when the Soviet State disintegrated and when suddenly a lot of activists started to show up at Greenpeace because, as he described it, they were without a home and cause. Subsequently they changed the working and aim of Greenpeace. Many of them came from the „socialist“ movement without any understanding of what Marx and Engels said at their time.
They would rightfully see them as a counterrevolitionary movement bringing us back to a neofeudalistic time with all the suppression.
Well, I have always suspected Groucho was politically unreliable.
I remember playing golf with this staid midwestern couple. The man missed a make able putt and got very angry. He pointed the putter at the ball and hissed, “You…you…you…COMMUNIST”, out of decorum and politeness.
I would have said MoFo.
https://rumble.com/v1j8uuu-news-footage-on-9112001-at-pentagon-aired-one-time-and-never-again-on-tv-af.html
I notice how the failure to plot a realistic course through the political, economic and social complications of our world often lead us to devolve responsibility onto one person. In this case President Trump who copped no end of flak, at the time and since, for his perceived inability to make the right judgement. This is often grossly unfair, but we all do it. No criticism is intended of your comment, it is just an observation, one made knowing how President Truman noted how the ‘the buck stopped with him’.
Public Affairs?
Seems salient these days as gatekeepers of info to the public, meme spinners and spreaders of general BS as the ubiquitous “unnamed officials” quoted as sources of “facts” in damn near every MSM press release about UKR.
Political vs. Intel vs. good-sense Ops. A sad tale of woe we’ve heard many times from Vietnam on. So, Larry, which side of this House Of Cards do you see taking a bite of the shit sandwich for Ukraine when all is said and done? Internally, I mean, because from the Pentagon to the White House, this failure will be an orphan. Surely our ISR is good enough to know Russia had/has us foxed in every category. Didn’t anyone in the chain tell them? Or is money and Russia-hate enough?
Or is this just another system-wide failure that will be swept under the proverbial rug? Will anyone own this?
We have a track record in the US of holding no one accountable except punishing those low down on the totem pole. I think you’re last question is the answer. No one will own this.
No one ever owned/was accountable for the lack of Iraq WMD. Just some lateral transfers for the most obvious offenders, even some promotions.
That’s a pretty big screw-up. If they can get away with that, they can get away with anything.
I remember hearing a phrase from some high ranking professional permanent state apparatchik that John Bolton Was/ is “the usual kiss up kick down style manager”..
Yes. He is a despicable human being.
The way it’s structured now sounds like Analysists aren’t even needed.
Correct.
Pliant analysts are still required to maintain the veneer of keeping conclusions at arms length, and to help justify why certain actions should be done. Only pliant ones.
Amen
Analysts are needed as whipping boys for the top brasses’ failures. Pardon my french but perhaps a realistic spelling of the word would not have a y in it.
Hass,
Your pithy comment and Larry’s confirmation are perhaps the most sobering remarks I’ve read this week. God help us all.
Have you seen the soap drama Homeland? To what extent does it match the work of the real cia?
ZERO. It is a Hollywood fantasy of what they’d like the CIA to be. I think Dilbert, the cartoon, is a better representation. Except Dilbert is now transgender.
LOL
The problems Larry addresses seem to be a feature not a bug. The rulers and their managerial class know what they want to do, they simply want the justification to do it. They have also convinced themselves that anyone who disagrees with them is a know nothing, pawn of Putin who watches Fox News. So there is a carrot and a stick with this. If you are a believer you get a nice career and status. If you are a heretic you are exiled from the managerial class.
The issues that afflict the CIA are the same one that prejudice any large scale organization, including businesses. Alvesson and Spicer call it the “Stupidity Paradox”. In any hierarchical top down system, the smooth operation of any middle level group is based on convenience to that group and conformity with upper level objectives — and not on results. This is not something new in my opinion — it goes back to feudal times and earlier. This leads to the propagation of illusions, delusions and the creation of systemic mythologies. This is why wars are lost long before defeat is accepted. The Sandinistas vs the Contras is a good example. And, of course Afghanistan. Earlier: Vietnam. Now: the Ukraine. the US is on a suicidal path. as I write here in my article “How the West was Won” , now revised to credit Larry’ superb analysis! https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/how-the-west-was-won-russias-victory
Thanks. And thanks for the link to your post.
“that prejudice” is a function of the pre judgements/assertions inherent in the system, and hence in practice cannot be reformed, but only be transcended”
“the US is on a suicidal path”
If the definition of “the US/The United States of America” is a network of coercive social relations not restricted to a geo-political construct misrepresented as “The United States of America”, then your assertion has validity as a function of the pre-judgements/assertions inherent in the system, but it does not necessarily mean that all interacting within this network of coercive relations will commit suicide, despite Mr. Biden and others seeking to conflate the two states by misrepresenting the “Fundamentals of the State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence” Presidential Decree no 355 of the Russian Federation dated 2nd June 2020.
As to those affecting suicide, some are of the view that finally some have learned good manners.
Isn’t there any such thing as audit of operational and internal failures? Like hospitals have meetings where surgical procedures resulting in death are reviewed by all the doctors. I remember when India did nuclear tests in 1998, the Director of CIA got the news from a CNN report on Indian Government announcement. The centre for monitoring compliance with CTBT reported that as an earthquake on India Pakistan border. Heads should have rolled for this but apparently nothing happened. Do you know what really happened?
Recién leí en un libro de Carmen Boullosa y Mark Wallace que la CIA contrabandeó armas a los Contras vía los cárteles mexicanos de droga. (El cártel de Guadalajara, en ese entonces) La CIA se habría hecho “de la vista gorda” vis a vis las actividades de los cárteles. ¿Le tocó estar en eso? Gracias
Tr. Yandex
I just read in a book by Carmen Boullosa and Mark Wallace that the CIA smuggled weapons to the Contras via the Mexican drug cartels. (The Guadalajara cartel, at that time) The CIA would have turned a “blind eye” vis a vis the activities of the cartels. Did you get to be in that? Thank you
No. That is bullshit.
Larry,
Do you know what the CIA’s analysts were saying about Yanukovych, the Maidan Revolution and Russian involvement?
Does not matter what they said. Maidan was a CIA/MI6 op.
Henry Rech is exhibit A in support of this blog post. These 3 letter agency trolls should spend less time on psyops and instead redirect their efforts to collecting intelligence.
Randolorian,
Looks like they’re gonna haveta send me back to spy school for retraining – not much use if I can’t generate credibility.
All I need now is for buntalanlucu to pipe up and twist the knife – a surprise package in a petite school girl.
“redirect their efforts to collecting intelligence”
Without “analysts” how would they find it to collect, and with “analysts” how would they find it to collect ? – I hear they even lost China because apparently they took the wrong directions.
Can you explain in general terms how an agency like the CIA could bring tens of thousands of people out into the street across various venues with a particular unified point of view?
After Yanukovych fled, the Rada voted to remove him. I have trouble thinking of this as a coup. Can you explain how the CIA influenced 328 deputies to do its biding?
snipers killing protesters,the elected president fleeing for his life,what the hell else would you call it?!!!
Snipers: I am sure you have a clear and suitable narrative about what happened.
Yanukovych: The Maidan protesters wanted him gone and they wanted regime change. I wouldn’t hang around if I was him.
Rada: Was the Rada vote for Yanukovych’s removal legal? Was the process legal? (I have seen suggestions it wasn’t.) Did the CIA pay off the 328 deputies that voted for removal, as suggested?
CIA: the CIA might have been in there fomenting the situation but it required tens of thousands of people to protest simultaneously across many venues.
Russians: The Russians were in there trying to get their way and stirring trouble as much as was the CIA.
But the problem for the Russians was that the protestors wanted them gone.
Influencing masses of people is a well developed science with proven methodologies. You know that. It is the modus operandi of what are often called “color revolutions”, which the CIA/MI6 has fomented since the 1950s.
Their “particular unified point of view” has historical roots. CIA have been supporting Banderites since the end of WWII (as a tool against USSR). In the 90s that support increased drastically (and it became a tool against Russia). The coup was long time coming.
Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe. All members of Rada are corrupt to the bone. You do really have trouble thinking if you need explanation about influencing corrupt politicians.
Can you explain the popularity of Pet Rocks? Same thing, get a few people to bite and the rest just come along because, ultimately, the vast majority of people have no sense.
Like George Carlin said “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Larry,
Why were the two branches opened up to each other given the concerns you mentioned?
Are you saying that the operations and analysis branches were opened up to each so that the operations branch could influence assessments produced by the analysis branch?
Not influence. Control
Was that to cover up operational stuff ups or to have the operations go in a particular way, in effect, bringing policy decisions down to the CIA op level?
Scary. Sounds to me like everything (operational) is starting with political whims and not based on intelligence. If that’s the correct take-away, then it explains a lot.
Furthering your situation analysis is the widespread derision of the reality-based community – it is much more politically convenient to believe:
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality”
and of course, this drives fixing the facts around the policy.
I suspect it will take a major societal collapse, but perhaps chartering the IC as the Fed is, would provide the necessary distance from policy makers. And maybe connect promotions with historical accuracy reviews. If someone keeps getting it wrong – they should do something else!
Thank you Larry. This helps to explain how the logic of the “watermelon” (ref Andrei) has been so widely accepted in the intel sausage machine in the US.
Still I am sure many at the company have worked out what is going to happen over the next few days and the word has made it to the head shed.
1. There is a vote going on and the answer will be yes.
2. The Russian Government is going to say “Approved”.
3. Putin is sitting at a desk pen in hand waiting to sign it into law.
4. At some inappropriate time (Friday-ish) a rocket or artillery round is fired from Ukraine into the Southern area of the SMO.
4a. By the time it lands, it may just as well have hit the most upmarket Street in Moscow.
My question is…
What do you think they have told the “Big Guy” happens next?
Who won this one, the operators or the analysts?
It’s even better than that – as soon as the papers are signed (probably on Friday), any Ukrainian troops in those 4 regions are occupying Russian territory. If Russia is looking for a reason to declare war, it doesn’t get much better than that.
Russia is not looking for a reason to declare war, they are way ahead of that. This is more like them ticking the boxes off on the paperwork as they like to do.
Think more like, how would the US talks on returning to JCPOA go if Tehran took out Macy’s (around Friday-ish)?
About Friday-ish, all photo ops, press statements and negotiations may become somewhat more kinetic.
These two functions should be split up into separate agencies. And that’s IF we even retain an operations function.
Can we have referendum in Greece next so we can leave EU and join Russian federation. Thanks again for all you do bringing truth to the masses around the world Larry. I share your webpage one Greek at a time hoping for critical mass some day
Alex says Biden is favourite Son of Greece but I beg to differ and present to the world Larry Johnsonopoulos:)
“hoping for critical mass some day”
To facilitate transcendence facility/quality is critical not mass.
Hoping for “critical mass” is often waiting for Godot.
Russia is no longer communist and more free than those of us trapped in Euro prison and its stifelling laws.
“no longer communist”
De facto “The Soviet Union” never was a union of soviets, which were given multiple definitions or none according to context.
“Communism” which was given multiple definitions or none according to context was never attained, hence the attempted sleights of hand by Mr. Brezhnev and others rebranding this as present existing socialism (also subject to multiple definitions or none according to context).
All of the above had utility in facilitating the ongoing transcendence of “The Soviet Union” who exists with a diminishing half-live as an ideology, by The Russian Federation which at least until today exists as a practiced changing reality.
Sorry one more thing.. FORZA ITALY FORZA MELONI!!!
“What has damaged, perhaps irreparably, the CIA’s ability to carry out these two missions is that the operations side of the house also engages in covert and clandestine paramilitary operations.”
That has been the case from 1947 onwards with the “integration” of the OSS and others, which has increased over time in illustration of – abscence makes the heart grow fonder, whilst familiarity breeds contempt, which in contexts of opportunity facilitate challenge, even if not analysed/perceived by those being challenged.
“I also believe that the United States needs professional case officers who are skilled at recruiting and managing foreign agents who provide the United States with the national secrets of their country.”
You can believe what you like as can the CIA and its interlocutors, however transcendence is not predicated on belief, but on inter-actions of changing facilities in changing contexts, whilst “reform” does not remove all of the causal networks, merely linearly reforms them into differing relationships of interactions facilitating “changing the wiring diagram will not be nearly as pronounced as either critics or promoters usually would lead us to believe.”
Nice story, thanks for that. It is always interesting to hear from someone who was in the “trenches”, so to speak.
It would also be interesting to hear it told from an Ops guy’s perspective.
For example what happens if an analyst is wrong, or his analysis is tainted because of a confirmation bias, faulty reasoning or some other reason ?
Who analyzes the analysis ?
Right now… same people that analyze the operations … and the outcomes
Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza
https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/americas-open-wound
Interesting. Though I wonder if we understand the essence of this collection of anecdotal data (“anecdotal” carries no value judgement btw).
The CIA is not the essential part of the moral of this story. What we have here is the State and its instruments working as intended. The main purpose being, in a capitalist system, to be shaped by the needs of the economic class that gave birth to the modern state in the first place. This state of affairs is only scandalous in the eyes of folks who believe in the illusion of modern democracy being designed to serve the interests of the people. And no, the enjoyment of a 50s style economic bonanza by a near majority in the west does not constitute the summit of true democratic success.
The CIA does what was designed to do, though conditions for the capitalist state have worsened considerably.
There is one main change in circumstances today that contributes to differences to past operational doctrine: we’re reaching the limits of the biosphere, the well is drying up.
This brings consequences for the USA, such as: a push back from the countries that were robbed to make the USA “great” (many countries are going into survival mode, there are less crumbs falling off the table).
And the corollary of average Americans themselves becoming legitimate prey. You’re basically bemoaning the fact that the CIA has turned its sights on Americans, as a result of the traditional victims being exhausted.
Exactly right!
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
Bill Casey – CIA
Boy, if that doesn’t tell the American people to accept eating shite forever, I don’t know what is.
I wonder whether the difference / separation between operations officers and intelligence analysis within the CIA can be compared with the Creation of Man in the book of Genesis. The whole second chapter relates about Man’s search for someone who will be an ‘over against’ (- the Biblical Hebrew text uses a curious phrasing here -) to him. I’ve read an illuminating explanation of this Hebrew ‘over against’ phrase, which points out that the woman from her opposite position ‘over against’ is noticing different things than her man is noticing. The explanation goes on to compare this with the way how communist posters used to have all the noses of the activists portrayed pointing into one and the same direction.
Well, the CIA after its reorganisation by Brennan has taken leave of the operations officers and intelligence analysis being ‘over against’ each other. Instead the activist model was embraced which – very much like this was done by the communist ideology – strifes towards forcefully streamlining the intel narrative into one single pre-determined direction from the very theoretical beginning. From this unilateral introduction of singlemindedness within an intelligence organisation like the CIA it is possible to analyse the flipping of sides that is happening in the modern times: the US & EU are modeling themselves more and more according to the Soviet Union way of thinking while the multilateralism of the BRICS+ nations do resemble the free world before the US & EU went woke. The multilateral approach forwarded by Vladimir Putin and a host of other leaders does exist thanks to the mutual respect for their national differences, that may even originate from having read and understood the Good Book.
I still find this “the CIA really are that dumb” story hard to swallow in full.
There are of course 2 stories – the public version (Russia is an aggressive state wanting to get back its old empire) and the inside version (if only we back a few more Nazis to shell Donbas civilians, publicly pretend we will accept Ukraine into Nato, place a load of biolabs in Ukraine and build nuke launchers in Romania and Poland, then we can force an otherwise restrained Russia to reluctantly do something we can then call an aggressive invasion).
I can’t help thinking that the inside version is a lot smarter than the public version, albeit still somewhat wrong and far too cynical to admit to.
Then there is the question – is Ukraine’s inability to defend itself against the 2022 massively improved Russian forces a CIA misjudgement or do they not care at all?
Frankly I think they expected this. The point is not to defend Ukraine – the point is to scare the hell out of Europe, boost US control of Europe (Nato) and stop trade between Europe and China/Russia block countries.
I think this has all gone to plan with the exception being rest of the world which has observed and is backing away rapidly from US. Who wants to be the next Kurds or Ukrainians? Saudi has applied to join BRICS!!!!!
That is the fallacy–i.e., you believe they are really smarter behind the curtain. This is the Intel Community version of the Wizard of Oz. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
Perhaps better informed by defining which curtain?
“to plan”
Some perceive “plans”, whilst others perceive opportunities for which the “planners” did not plan through restriction of perceptions of how “to plan”.
Quickest way to the PDB is to spin the gist in the direction the Administration wants to hear.
I think we need to go another layer down. The fundamental problem with the CIA is that its primary purpose is to serve the interests of a tiny and but powerful fraction of the already tiny ruling class. Notice that I do not say ‘American ruling class,’ because this is a globalist endeavor. This hardly distinguishes the CIA from any other institution of government, or, more broadly, institutions of power such as education, public or private, commerce, information/entertainment and even sport. As long as this is the case, ALL of these institutions will perform much as they do now, no matter what sort of internal reorganization may occur. The various stages of reorganization described are, in fact, the history of the consolidation of control by this ruling-class clique. Until we start decorating the lamp posts, this is not going to change.
” The fundamental problem with the CIA is that its primary purpose is to serve the interests of a tiny and but powerful fraction of the already tiny ruling class.”
Some would suggest that the fundamental problems are the interactions of purposes of those whom they attempt to serve, and the purposes of others seeking to frustrate the purposes of those whom they attempt to serve, facilitating their complicities in serving the purposes of others seeking to frustrate the purposes of those whom they attempt to serve.
It is “assisted suicide” by complicity, not a suicide by sole agency.
” Until we start decorating the lamp posts, this is not going to change.”
Decorating lamp posts is not sufficient to facilitate “assisted” lateral change, but the opponents do not agree as a function being practitioners of no man/no problem when faced with perceived Gordian knots, facilitating their complicities in serving the purposes of others seeking to frustrate the purposes of those whom they attempt to serve.
….Until we start decorating the lamp posts, this is not going to change……
You do not ever want to go there. A civil war in our country would be a decade of horrific massacres and atrocities .
Much Better to vote with your feet. our forefathers did, we can too
Scott Ritter has an oped in today’s RT about his disillusionment with the CIA.
The need for a reorg at the CIA is a symptom of a deeper problem: personnel. Tolerance of hiring imperialists, anti-nationalists, communists, socialists, and enemies of European civilization, especially our constitutional version of it, was a mistake made a long time ago. The rise of such people to unaccountable senior management was the inevitable consequence.
Mistakes can be fixed in institutions within either a homogenous or authentic federal system in a society with a strong civilizational mission. Ours used to be European liberty. Now one goal of the empire we have become (in support of its civilization mission) is to effectively disenfranchise, preparatory to replacement, all European Americans who subscribe to our old civilization mission.
Current CIA management, from their perspective, didn’t make a mistake that needs correction. The system that exists now is working as designed. It will continue working as designed until either all senior managers are replaced or the institution is abolished. (and prevented from being reborn in government-funded corporations)
What is your take on John Stockwell? I have in mind in particular the paragraph that starts with “I don’t mean to abuse you with verbal violence…”
Jon Stockwell was a righteous dude. Unlike him, the regional Agency bosses who abandoned their Vietnamese subordinates to the NVA, whilst they fled back to Saigon, were rewarded with career advancements. The ones like Stockwell, who did the right thing vis-a-vis their Vietnamese cohorts, had their careers with the Agency stuck in the mud. I urge the blogsters here to watch this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za2kq2U7JKg&t=4s
Wrote a piece making fun of this chaos, but really this speaks for itself, no need for comment.
One thing tho if anyone knows, who within this intelligent(not)monster organized the murder of the General of Peace Soleimani or was that a wholly Israeli Zionist inside job blowing its Trumpet
I am not stating where I want to go. I’m merely pointing out a reality that must be dealt with. It is already dealing with us.
Another reality worth paying some mind is that dead people don’t implement policy.
Claramente, todo ese arduo trabajo de esa agencia es totalmente ilegal en un pais extranjero como en USA.
Los EUA siempre se han metido en asuntos que no les corresponden vilolando el derecho internacional.
Si antes estaba muy mal, en el presente es Absurdo.
el mundo no marcha en la direccion correcta con estas intromisiones.
Nosotros los Mexicanos, cuando leemos un poco de historia nos horrorizamos de tener un vecino como ese.
Cuando leemos las historias mas modernas no nos sentimos en lo mas minimo tranquilos.
Vivimos y respiramos solo porque nuestro vecino del norte quiere pero puede aplastarnos en cuanto se le ocurra.
Nosotros decimos coloquialmente: Mexico vive bajo la bota gringa.
Nuestro actual presidente aparentemente se pone en contra de USA y a favor de Rusia. Aparentemente es muy valiente, pero en realidad se esta llevando a todo el pais. No recuerda lo que le paso a el ultimo presidente de Mexico que se puso en contra de USA. que fue Jose Lopez Portillo. Ahi empezo la gran debacle economica de Mexico que solo fue paliada gracias a que los sigueientes 4 presidentes de Mexico fueron escogidos y educados en USA. Pero el actual, parece que ni educacion tubo.
Hi, Larry, I’ve just read the Saker’s warning about an upcoming hurricane that is directed towards Tampa, Florida. Wishing you well & keep safe!
Latest CIA Op: The more I think about it, the SCO, as seen in the recent Samarkand fraternal tryst, is such an unlikely phenomenon that it has to be a CIA op.
Political/Moral Dimension: The SCO is a who’s who of world fascism. Autocratic/totalitarian regimes which summarily, brutally and ruthlessly suppress all dissent and opposition, coupled to kleptocratic, oligopoly capitalism.
Relational Dimension: The enmities that underlie the group are lethal and can’t be held in abeyance forever – China/India, India/Pakistan, Saudi Arabia/Iran. How will Russia react when China invades Mongolia (all over and done by morning coffee break)?
Economic Dimension: There are such disparities in resource endowment, technological competency and wealth within the group that trade will be problematic and the consequent financial imbalances so debilitating that collapse is very likely. China will have to finance all the imbalances (it is the only one capable of doing this over the long term) – the question is how long will it bear the load. The stresses will pile on when the price of oil and gas and volumes decline as a result of climate change induced fossil fuel retrenchment. Many of the member/associate countries rely on fossil fuel exports. The SCO will end up like Bretton Woods – a trade and international finance system, at the same time, reliant on and then constrained by asymmetric economic power. To top it off, Russia wants a gold convertible rouble and China the fiat yuan.
It seems to me that the member countries will be so distracted by their mutual problems that they will forget what the SCO was for.
Has to be a CIA op.
Substitute “Davos” for “SCO” and “US, Canada, UK, etc.” for “China, Russia, India, etc” and you’d almost start to make sense.
As it stands, your analysis/prediction – fantasy, more appropriately – won’t age well.
Fair enough on the substitution. 🙂
However, Bretton Woods lasted almost 30 years. I think SCO will be lucky to make 5 years.
15th June 2001. So far it is past your proposed expiry date.
Facts…easy to find in this day and age. Even easier if you have been following and studying aparticular subject prior to it becoming ‘fashionable’.
Ad,
Yes, I have been loose with my terminology and I am running ahead of things in relation to the “economic dimension”. I want to avoid writing a treatise and hence have skated over details.
Particularly this year there has been talk of setting up a monetary system specific to the SCO members. This has been talked up by people like Hudson and a prominent Russian economist, Glazyev.
The proposals for a Eurasian monetary system and talk of formation of a Eurasian trading bloc have been more keenly ramped up following the sanctions imposed on Russia earlier this year.
So it is very much in its nascent stages. Some of these proposals have been around for years and perhaps the fact that nothing concrete has emerged might have something to do with the potential internal contradictions of the putative system. Perhaps recent events might add impetus to them.
John Brennan. A man who literally fucked up everything he touched in his life.
Sorry for a second post. I was literally just wondering if there was anyone stupider than John Brennan. And then it came to me. Vicki Nuland. Larry, do you think there is a chance that this hell beast will ever be held accountable for her role in this debacle in Ukraine? I keep thinking they are going to need a patsy. And God knows, Ukraine is Vicki Nuland’s from stem to stern. Or I am just dreaming, and she will go on causing death and destruction all over the world?
At the risk of sounding like I take the side of the ops types (I don’t!), there never has been a long term large scale randomized trial that established the alleged benefits of flossing.
As usual, follow the money. There’s no big profit to be made selling floss, and no profit in confirming that Russia is acting reasonably.
Politics (money) triumphs over intelligence. Therefore Russia can rely on the CIA to get it wrong most of the time.
All I want to see is Russia start wet ops on their enemies in kind with Russia’s Alpha Group.
So basically whatever Whitehouse wants to hear you tell them.
Yep. You’re catching on.
Larry, a few questions if I might.
Why does your CIA organization chart not show the OMA? My boss and I went through their office to visit various stateside case officers and analysts. Did they shitcan this office, and thereby kicking the military to the curb?
I knew a few people who were stationed in El Salvador, one officer, and one enlisted man.
Do you know who carried out the attack on the embassy Marines and other American citizens in that sidewalk cafe? My personal guesses would be
the Salvadoran government.
the Mara Salvatrucha.
the evil Commies.
the false flag empire, through one of their subordinate entities.
Thanks in advance.
It was renamed. Special Activities Division I believe.
If I recall correctly it was Mara Salvatrucha.
A cranky old man…
There is a meme, “Old man rants at clouds” that my daughter likes to trot out as a glib response when she is tored of me pointing out obvious inconsistencies in “news” or “editorial commentary”. I got tired of it one day and responded by pointing out that the old man may actually be pointing and yelling abput the tornado that his long lived experience tells him is coming bit the simple fact the wind is drowning out his voice doesn’t mean what she sees and thinks is happening is actually the truth. Perhaps moving closer to the old, apparently cranky, man would put her in a position to hear and heed a warning that may just save her life. It took a few months of me silently responding by pointing up at an angle with exaggerated mouthing of the word “Tornado” for her much loved, humorous meme response to be battered into submission. A gesture silently pointing the way.
Keep ranting at the clouds Mr Johnson. I would rather be falsely warned 99 times than miss the one time I loose all my worldly possessions and possibly life through assuming what is being said rather than leaning in and actually listening.
Apologies for spelling and grammatical errors. Fat fingers and small phone keyboard. Old man 0. Technology 1
So that “analytics” wing is basically the bureau of propaganda. Wouldn’t be too surprising, and explains why ops instead is usually ahead //
YOU: “I believe the United States needs a professional intelligence service that is comprised of analysts who have the task of reviewing all source intelligence and providing political leaders with an unvarnished, apolitical assessment of what is going on in the world.”
ME: don’t put it in Washington DC. Put in Kansas City, or Des Moine or Baton Rouge. Somewhere people can be normal and think normally. That doesn’t happen in Washington DC.
Do we wonder why this country is so effed up? Just from the comments to Larry’s article, i can see that most of you are little gamers who probably still play with xbox. What is missing in this country and the so called free world is open debate and transparency. Quit the drama and the secrecy and all of the interpretation games. Life can be straight-forward if you demand it to be. If you don’t try to layer every scenario with nuance and interpretation. Most of the ivy league ruling class that tries to run everything are the product of generations of inbreeding, and by definition are not brilliant in any areas of thought or endeavor, but are rather offshoots of the lucky sperm club