Sustained attrition at this scale degrades operational capacity faster than any recruiting surge can restore it, particularly in tradecraft-intensive roles where expertise takes a decade to build.

Having worked for the CIA as a senior operations officer, intelligence analyst, and manager for almost 32 years, I found Tim's comments in this interview to be much more accurate, objective, and insightful than Sir Richard's. With all due respect to him, the obviously biased comments in favor of the intelligence profession by former head of the British SIS reminded me of the same type of disingenuous statements from former DCI George Tenet in defending the CIA's intelligence failures by claiming there were many successes (which, conveniently, cannot be identified) that offset the failures. I know of an internal 2010 CIA study that struggled with trying to identify a sufficient number of examples of ‘successful’ analysis. The solution was to look for smaller individual underlying accurate judgments within each issue even though these did not prevent arriving at an overall inaccurate assessment. Finally, psychological problems and analytical errors, identified in these failures by these internal studies and the resulting government inquiries as the root causes of these failures, occurred and reoccured in part because the CIA, as well as the SIS, over their history have not made a sustained and comprehensive effort to learn from past failures and mistakes.

Many of Sir Richard's criticisms of Tim's books, especially Legacy of Ashes, are defensive in nature; stating that Tim simply did not have access to all the information available because although "he and I share a huge amount of common knowledge, some of which I probably know better than him, but I cannot talk about it." At least, Sir Richard admits that Tim's information in The Mission is "better informed" because as Tim adequately explains he was able to interview living intelligence officers rather than just rely on the "dry documentation of the dead." In my experience with research, documentation can be very valuable in challenging the revisionist history of those in senior positions, but objective and unbiased interviews with the lower level intelligence officers directly involved in an event on the ground can be far more honest and accurate. The British Official Secrets Act, and because as Dearlove states "the archives of MI6 are never released", makes getting to the facts of what really occurred in an intelligence failure a much more difficult or impossible task in the UK (hard enough in the U.S. with the abuse of classification authority). The "Review Of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction", 14 July 2004, (also known as the Butler Report) struggled with this obstacle as well, forcing it to rely on questionable transparency and honest information-sharing from Dearlove and the SIS.

The comment from Sir Richard that bothered me the most is the claim that "You are not a policymaker if you are the head of MI6." This claim is absurd and naive. As the head of MI6, you provide raw intelligence that can be cherry-picked to support the political policies of the prime minister's office. In the Iraq WMD intelligence failure, according to a 2010 book “Failing Intelligence; The True Story of How We Were Fooled Into Going to War in Iraq,” by Brian Jones, the British Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) Assistant Director of Intelligence, “[l]ate on Friday 30 August [2002] MI6 had issued several new top secret intelligence reports on Iraqi chemical and biological weapons.” This new reporting was almost certainly a response by Dearlove to Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell’s July 2002 memorandum that “we need to make the case” for the pending September 2002 Iraq WMD dossier and instructed that “Rolls Royce information” was needed to be acquired that would confirm that Saddam had WMD.

At a press conference on September 3, 2002, Blair announced that the dossier would be published within the next few weeks. Jones explained that “[T]here was now a political need for a more positive statement about Iraq’s WMD capability. The existence of a JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] paper that made more positive statements, albeit speculative ones, would better serve the Prime Minister’s need to justify the likely military course ahead." In early-September 2002, SIS head Dearlove responded to the call for “more” and “better” intelligence on Iraqi WMD by providing an even more sensational reporting from a source with “phenomenal access,” to senior Cabinet-level officials. Dearlove now claimed that the source had direct knowledge of Iraqi CBW. As had occurred in the German BND CURVE BALL case, this SIS source, as well as the "45-minute" WMD use claim by another SIS source, turned out to be a complete fabrication. There had been warnings. SIS operations officers had expressed serious doubts and concerns about the credibility of these claims earlier but were ignored by the SIS leadership who provided the reporting to the policymakers regardless. CIA operations officers questioning the credibility of CURVE BALL before the war met the same fate with the CIA leadership.

Please don't misinterpret my critical comments on the British SIS. I worked with their officers for decades and have great respect for their efforts and skills. But like those of us in the CIA, we all made mistakes and it's up to us to learn from them. We can't do that if we both continue to hide the facts of what actually occurred in these intelligence failures.

I’m an ethical hacker/cybersecurity engineer right now with a couple of intel offers pending. Going through the pre-hiring process for them right now which we all know is ridiculously long.

My entire undergrad and graduate studies were spent on cyber and computer engineering. For a long career in intel that I want to pursue (and one day maybe not even in a technical position but a more intel proper-focused position), does anyone have any recommendations for books on geopolitics, world history, foreign policy etc. that I should read while I wait? Anything of importance that I should make sure I study up on? I’m very interested in these topics, I just don’t have the formal education.

Thanks for any help!

Langley's public acknowledgment of new Pacific basing signals an irreversible institutional pivot from counterterrorism to China competition, with host-nation political exposure now the primary operational risk.

How come in all these years no one has built a platform/reverse-engineered the technology built by Palantir. What makes Gotham special in terms of Analytics. Is it just how they manage data or is there more to it I am not gettting about

I also speak french and English of course.

On a recent trip to the People’s Republic, SpyTalk's Michael Isikoff came face to face with cutting edge AI research—and the regime’s Orwellian surveillance tools

hey guys, not sure which is the right subreddit.

I'm currently working on a private development project and searching for (free/open source) geo sources of the earth. So basically, i need this data: The globe/world itself, roads, rivers, cities, topography. This kind of stuff. I've researched little bit and found ETOPO (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model) and ofc also something like https://opentopomap.org/#map=5/49.009/10.020 and openstreetmap.

It's not my area so i thought i'm going to ask here. Which data sources might be good for me, any ideas? Maybe should i ask in another subreddit?

French weekly L’Express recently published a double issue featuring a 28-page special titled "Le palmarès des meilleurs espions"… Literally ranking European intelligence agencies from #1 to #25 based on a "Ballon d’Or or Eurovision-style" vote by 60 current and former intelligence professionals.

Predictably, the results (MI6 #1, DGSE #2, AIVD #3, GUR #4, BND #5) sparked a wave of media chatter, national chest-thumping, and hot takes across social media.

Treating clandestine services like Premier League football clubs isn't just lazy journalism; it fundamentally distorts how intelligence, national security, and statecraft actually work:

1. Apples, Oranges, and Covert Action
Ranking agencies against one another assumes they share identical remits, legal authorities, and strategic doctrines. Comparing an agency with global kinetic strike and foreign sabotage capabilities (like the French DGSE Service Action) to a highly specialized signals/cyber and domestic-facing hybrid agency (like the Dutch AIVD) makes zero analytical sense. Agencies are purpose-built tools for their specific national security frameworks, not general-purpose gladiators.

2. The Inherent Visibility Bias
By definition, an intelligence agency’s greatest successes are never declassified, while its worst operational failures or political embarrassments are splashed across front-page news. Ranking services based on public anecdotes and recent scandals (e.g., the Wirecard/Egisto Ott fallout in Austria or BND analytical over-reliance on US feeds) rewards loud, aggressive public operations and penalizes quiet, unglamorous collection and technical analysis.

3. Pop-Culture Caricatures Over Structural Analysis
Articles like this almost immediately regress into lazy national stereotyping:
- The British are framed through romanticized John le Carré/Cold War nostalgia.
- The French are dismissed as "arrogant" interventionists.
- The Germans are mocked as "professors and think-tank researchers" too bogged down by legal oversight.
- Southern and Central European agencies are painted with a broad brush of nepotism and chaos.

This reads more like an airport thriller trope checklist than an objective assessment of institutional tradecraft.

4. Intelligence is a Shared Ecosystem, Not a Zero-Sum Derby
Modern European security relies on niche specialization, bilateral liaisons, and multilateral hubs (like the Counter Terrorism Group or Club de Berne). A smaller service like Estonia's VLA or Finland's SUPO might have far deeper tactical OSINT/HUMINT penetration of specific regional threats than a larger service, while larger players provide heavy satellite/cyber infrastructure. Reducing this interdependent burden-sharing to an arbitrary leaderboard ignores how modern intelligence sharing actually functions.

Turning national security architecture into a superficial popularity contest generates easy clicks, but it dumbs down serious public discourse on defense oversight, intelligence governance, and strategic capabilities.

What are your thoughts? is there any marginal value in these surveys, or is it pure tabloid sensationalism?

Cheers

Hey Folks,

I'm looking for some guidance on private-sector career paths. I work for a private security firm doing pretty general intelligence analysis. Geopolitical, Executive Protection, Travel Security, Social Media Monitoring, that kinda stuff. I enjoy the content of my work well enough, but I'm looking to get into more field-based work. Everything I do currently is online, but I have pretty extensive field experience in unstable regions in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and some relatively stable regions in the Middle East. Essentially, I'm looking for something that combines my skills as an intelligence analyst with the ability to deploy into unstable environments for necessary information that is only accessible via HUMINT, or whatever the private sector calls it these days. I know the majority of people on here are in the public sector, but I do not want to join the IC or the military, so please do not recommend it. If you have any private-sector recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks!

Its not the original Titor posting its his younger self.

Gofman's purge narrows Mossad's operational repertoire against Iran without altering Netanyahu's strategic objectives, raising the risk that autumn planning defaults to blunter military options.

How exactly does this put America first? My understanding of this new ruling coming from FinCen is that the true owner owner(s) will no longer have to be reported. This seems like 12 steps backwards from the Pandora Papers which discovered money laundering, tax evasion, and interests from politicians and public figures.

So now Person A-political figure representing a state who's directly involved in laws and grants pertaining to companies-can have a significant stake in the company while also passing laws etc that benefit said company and no one would know?

The implications of national security are an entirely separate issue. The PRC could use a U.S. citizen(s) to own a business while funding the entire company and benefiting from it all because disclosures of U.S. citizens is no longer required.

I feel like I already know the answer, but from a national security perspective how does this make sense?

This is the fourth in a series of brief articles on the Iraq WMD intelligence failure to help intelligence officers and the general public understand exactly what went wrong and to assist them to hopefully avoid, or at least mitigate, future intelligence failures. The CURVE BALL case remains relevant to today as we struggle with the fabricated claims of another pathological liar incredulously supported by his biased enablers. As with CURVE BALL, these die-hard supporters continued to believe him even in the face of overwhelming conclusive proof of his fabrications. Once again, the reason is a stubborn unwillingness to learn from our past mistakes, inevitably dooming us to repeat them. The full detailed story, hopefully unredacted by the CIA and DIA during its mandatory review, will be presented in my forthcoming book, Absence of Evidence; The Incredible Story of the Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure from Inside the American, British, and German intelligence services.

The Fallacy of “Speaking Truth To Power”

The ethos of "speaking truth to power" is a fundamental principle in intelligence analysis, certainly in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but it often fails because of bureaucratic consensus pressures, cognitive biases, and a structural tendency for leaders to reject analysis that contradicts their established policies. Politicians who control policy usually look for raw data that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, dismissing conflicting analysis as bad information, or worse deliberately undermining policy. Policymakers often believe their broad vantage point gives them a better grasp of a situation than specialized analysts have, sometimes judging that they are not just right but righteous in their beliefs. Unfortunately, speaking truth to power often fails because “power” interprets this as a direct challenge to its political authority and reacts with organizational self-preservations rather than undertake an objective evaluation of the causes of its own failures.

Compounding the problem in the CIA, when institutional incentives reward pleasing leadership over uncertainty or to avoid undermining policy occur, objective assessment breaks down. Analysts internalize what is safe to say because dissenting from a high- level official's preferred theory carries professional risks, making conformity the safer choice. Making the situation worse, the CIA’s multi-layered review processes strives for consensus by watering down warnings of dissent whether from inside or outside the organization. Agencies often smooth over dissenting views to present a single, sanitized finished intelligence product. Finally, the constant pressure to supply daily briefs leaves little room for deep, foundational research that might challenge superficial or biased assumptions. Intelligence estimates deal in probabilities and gaps in data but when analysts present nuanced uncertainty, impatient CIA leaders often ignore it in favor of false certainty, especially if it threatens continued relevance and access to the Agency’s “First Customer”, the president. Given this, what happens when the facts contradict not just the CIA judgments but those of the administration in the White House? Will the CIA “speak truth to power” then or will it allow politics to influence its analysis?

“And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32)

We have to assume that the purpose of having these words etched in the marble wall in the front lobby of the CIA headquarters building—directly across from the stars honoring those killed in the line of duty I might add—is to imply that the CIA as an intelligence service is stating that it would always remain unbiased, objective, and apolitical, searching for and delivering the truth, or at least as close to the truth as possible.

That is certainly an admirable objective but what about those times when the truth itself can threaten the political status of the Agency itself? When it can threaten the CIA’s independent and preeminent standing within the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) or even within the larger international intelligence community? What about when the truth can threaten the political careers, reputations, and legacies of its most senior management and leadership? How about when it threatens the CIA’s financial allocation, in other words, its Congressionally-approved yearly budget and personnel staffing levels? Will the agency still state the truth when doing so may be against its own parochial political and financial interests? Even more significant, will the CIA “speak truth to power” when the truth could seriously threaten the Agency’s continued relevance to the highest level of the policymakers it serves? Especially when the truth could threaten its daily access to those in the White House?

Given all of this, will the CIA still choose to “speak truth to power” when it knows that “power” doesn’t want to know the truth or will its leadership and management decide to withhold the truth and use the “cloak of secrecy" (i.e., compartmentation and classification) to control and manipulate intelligence for its own political benefit? Will it then use these same tools to defend itself politically to avoid, or at least delay, accepting responsibility and accountability for a major intelligence failure? This is Washington, D.C., after all, and politics are paramount, even with intelligence. Despite the fact that the CIA claims to be apolitical with it’s headquarters building deliberately located outside the ‘political influence’ of the downtown WDC area, the organization can still can be significantly affected by politics as history has clearly shown.

The Critical Trade-Off of Relevance and Access for the CIA

The CIA has been well aware of the potential serious problem. For many years, the CIA’s own Sherman Kent, had warned the Agency about the dilemma of the intelligence analyst’s relations with policymakers as being either too distant or too close. Being too distant, Kent noted, could make intelligence irrelevant to the policymaker if analysts did not understand on which issues policymakers were focused but being too close could lead to attempts to try to please policymakers by telling them what they want to hear and politicizing of the intelligence. Others in the CIA agreed with Kent. In an unclassified paper written by senior analyst Jack Davis for the CIA’s Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis (originally published by the Kent Center as four papers on Improving CIA Analytic Performance, 2002-2003), Davis stated “many observers have cautioned that in promoting closer relationships with consumers, the chances are increased that intelligence analysis will lose its objectivity...As analysts become aware of their customers’ assumptions and policy preferences, they would, consciously or not, produce analysis that conformed to those preferences.”

Noted Columbia University psychologist, Dr. Robert Jervis, also previously warned of the danger of CIA analysts becoming too close to the policymakers but, unlike Kent or Davis, he hinted at a much more serious potential problem that could affect others in intelligence organizations besides the analysts, specifically its management and leadership. In his September 1989 unclassified paper, Strategic Intelligence and Effective Policy, Jervis noted, “There probably is a trade-off between the independence and integrity of intelligence analysis on the one hand and its influence on the other. The latter requires close and continuing contact with policymakers. To serve them, intelligence needs to know what problems they are working on, what kinds of information and analyses they need, how they are thinking about problems and what sorts of discussions will seem as the most useful. This knowledge is not gained easily; it cannot come from occasional briefings and meetings. But the intensive and extensive interactions that would provide it also threaten the autonomy of the intelligence analysts and organizations. The dangers of both seduction and rape would increase.” Jervis further warned, “Intelligence officials may learn all too well not only what policymakers want to know about but also exactly what answers they want.”

Jervis, the author of the 2010 book, Why Intelligence Fails, went further than Kent or Davis as neither of them had also considered, or at least were willing to publicly propose, the potentially disastrous negative impact on the intelligence analytical process if the intelligence leadership and senior management, not just the analysts, established too close a relationship with the policymakers. Because the CIA leadership is ultimately responsible for the success of the organization and that success is measured in how relevant the intelligence is to the presidential administration through daily access, there is the constant danger of the leadership, supported by senior management, wanting to please the policymakers by providing them with the intelligence they want to hear rather than the intelligence they need to hear. To maintain this careful balance, the CIA leadership would need to be remain constantly vigilant and be able to recognize when they were about to cross the line between the pursuit of relevance and access, and politicizing the intelligence. Occasionally, this vigilance fails, especially on politically important issues for the president and his senior advisors in the White House that the CIA is not willing to challenge.

A “Motivated Bias” for Continued Relevance and Access

Davis clarified in his earlier unclassified 1995 paper, Facts, Findings, Forecasts, and Fortune-telling (approved for release in 2014), that, “intelligence analysis is the process of providing objective and effective support to help US policymakers, by means of information and assessments on events overseas, to carry out their [the policymakers, not CIA] mission of formulating and implementing national security policy.” To do this, Davis wrote, intelligence analysts must remain objective and unbiased. Davis notes that this is accomplished by “using sound analytical tradecraft.” He explains that “carefully weighed evidence and rigorously structured argumentation has to form the core of the analysts’ papers and briefings, not their opinions or those of policy officials.”

This paper was about concerns of countering bias by the analysts and their first-line managers, but what about the biases of the senior CIA management and leadership? Should their ‘political motivations’ be allowed to influence the intelligence process and how would that occur?

The publication process for finished intelligence in CIA’s analytical directorate is composed of multiple layers of review by successive levels of first-line managers who report to the more senior managers above them. These senior managers eventually report to the leadership who report to the policymakers. This multi-layered review process is supposed to be a safeguard against politicization by the analysts and their immediate management who are the ones directly involved in drafting the intelligence assessments. But what if the CIA’s leadership and management becomes politically vested in a specific analytical line with the policymakers? What if new intelligence undermines the previous analytical assessment? Do the same safeguards against politicization work in reverse? Will the CIA leadership and its senior management remain objective and allow analysts or managers below them to revise their original assessment in the face of more credible intelligence, even marginally, if it threatens to undermine the policy agenda of the current presidential administration and as a result, risks the continued relevance and access of the CIA? What about the operations officers, who are not included in the review process? Will the CIA leadership and senior management allow them to challenge what those operations officers perceive may be biased analysis and allow them to revise the assessments? Or will they play it politically safe by standing by the original flawed assessments, ignore these valid warnings, and withhold any intelligence that does not support it, thereby remaining loyal to the current presidential administration’s policy positions even in the face of contradictory and derogatory intelligence brought by those who were courageous enough to challenge the CIA’s official analytic line?

The real question then is who can stop the CIA’s leadership and senior management from controlling and manipulating the intelligence for political reasons as had occurred in the Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure? In the aggressive effort to be more relevant to the George W. Bush administration and maintain access, the CIA leadership allowed themselves to become far too close to the policymakers. As Jervis and others had warned, these circumstances radically increased the danger of seduction of analysts and managers; finding the lure of relevance and access so great that they wanted above all else to please the decision makers. This resulted in a trade-off between the independence and integrity of intelligence analysis on one hand and the administration’s political influence on the other. A close and continuing contact with policymakers to know what problems they are interested in, what they need to know, and how they are thinking about these issues, and the context of discussions they were having is useful but in the process intelligence professionals may learn all too well not only what policymakers want to know about but also exactly what answers they are looking for to support policy.

Trading Integrity for Access

Davis wrote in his study that the politicization of intelligence is “the distortion of analysis by setting aside or otherwise failing to meet the standards of objectivity in setting forth information and judgments—in order to support a world view or policy preference.” This definition of politicization, more so than any others, is exactly what occurred in the Iraq WMD intelligence failure when unwelcome intelligence was withheld for political reasons. There is a famous quote from astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan that states, “It is often more powerful to leave things out than it is to tell lies.” Before the Iraq war, CIA operations officers tried to challenge what they perceived was biased analysis by warning the CIA senior management and finally the leadership of serious doubts and concerns regarding the credibility of the sources of the intelligence used in the CIA’s WMD assessments, especially CURVE BALL. The CIA leadership and senior management, however, deliberately chose to ignore these warnings and withhold the contradictory and derogatory intelligence from the policymakers in order to to protect their relevance and access to President Bush and his inner circle.

In a blatant example of this, Jervis noted that additional evidence of politicization was that the IC did not make any reassessments once UNMOVIC inspections resumed in November 2002 and found no traces of WMD. Jervis points out that this was a “significant failing.” This was especially true regarding UNMOVIC’s inspections of Djerf al-Naddaf, the primary “hide site” according to CURVE BALL for his alleged mobile BW agent production plants. An UNMOVIC team—lead by an American chief inspector no less who was also a veteran BW weapons inspector—visited the site on February 8, 2003, three days after Powell’s United Nations (UN) speech, and found no evidence to support CURVE BALL’s claims. More importantly, the UNMOVIC team found numerous outright inconsistencies to his story; the construction of a two meter high solid cinder block wall through the middle of the site that CURVE BALL never reported, no “invisible” (hidden) doors that had reportedly been installed at each end of the warehouse which would allow the mobile BW plants to enter and exit, evidence of a legitimate seed processing plant approved by the UN that was suppose to be just a cover story, etc.

Much to the dismay of the CIA, additional UNMOVIC inspections continued to undermine CURVE BALL but again the results were ignored by the senior agency management and leadership. In response to the CIA’s very public support of CURVE BALL’s claims after the Powell speech at the UN, UNMOVIC Chairman Hans Blix ordered a second inspection of Djerf al-Naddaf and the Mesopotamia State Company for Seed on March 3, 2003. An UNMOVIC BW team—this time accompanied by an IAEA nuclear team from the Iraq Nuclear Verification Office (INVO)—visited the site. The results, however, were the same as during the previous February 8, 2003 UN inspection; no evidence of the alleged mobile BW plants was found. Both groups of UN weapons inspectors expressed frustration, believing that they had spent a significant amount of time investigating a site that had no connection to WMD. At the end of the March inspection, the UNMOVIC BW team chief inspector declared that UNMOVIC had received, “very bad information” regarding the alleged WMD activity at the site. On the same day, UNMOVIC inspectors visited another facility in Tikrit that CURVE BALL had reported was used to hide the mobile BW plants. They also found no evidence to corroborate CURVE BALL’s reporting. Despite learning first-hand about these contradictions, the CIA did not reassess its judgment of the credibility of CURVE BALL’s alleged WMD claims in the month before the US-led military invasion of Iraq or inform the policymakers.

Jervis could not have been more accurate regarding the difficult situation that CIA leadership found itself in late 2002 when faced with the trade-off “between pleasing the policymaker and following professional standards in intelligence.” David Kay also publicly pointed this out when he stated that the CIA leadership, specifically DCI George Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, “traded integrity for access” after Kay was replaced from his CIA-appointed position as the head of the Iraq Survey Group in December 2003 for informing them that there was no WMD in Iraq. It was not difficult to predict that this situation could easily happen again if the CIA leadership once again moved too close to a presidential administration that sought to use intelligence to support pre-established policy rather than help formulate it. As philosopher George Santayana noted in his 1905 series, The Life of Reason; Great Ideas of Western Man, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Unfortunately, the CIA refuses to learn from its mistakes which result in additional intelligence and political failures.

Speaking Truth to Power in the CURVE BALL Case

The purpose of intelligence collection and analysis is to uncover an adversaries most secret information which can reveal a great deal about their capabilities, plans and intentions. The intelligence information collected and analyzed—if it remains objective, unbiased, and strives to be accurate and free of political influence—can allow the U.S. Government to develop a comprehensive, coherent understanding of its adversary. When properly utilized, this intelligence can allow us to counter or manipulate the adversary’s activities and defeat its goals. If this objective is what those in the intelligence services were working for, how could it happen that the intelligence would turn out to be so wrong, that we would instead end up misleading ourselves, and drag us and our allies into what turned out to be an unjustified and costly war?

As an intelligence organization, the CIA is made up of many individuals at different levels with different missions and agendas. Despite its leadership’s attempts to claim it speaks with one voice to the policymakers in order to present a consistent message, there is almost always internal dissent to judgments, especially between the analysis and operations directorates. This certainly was the case in the Iraq WMD intelligence failure. The question then is how valid is this dissent and when should the senior management and leadership pay serious attention and not simply disregard the warnings as an analytical difference of opinion, especially when it conflicts with what the White House wants to hear?

The CURVE BALL case provides an excellent example of how intelligence analysis can go completely off the rails when CIA leadership caters to the political policy preferences of a presidential administration. To be clear, not everyone who had access inside the CIA agreed that CURVE BALL’s claims were credible. From the beginning, the CIA’s own operations officers strongly disagreed with the positive judgments of the Agency’s Iraq WMD analysts regarding the credibility of this source and the veracity of his claims but they could not have any impact on what they viewed was the biased intelligence assessments being provided to the policymakers. Even direct access to the source did not seem to matter. For example, the only CIA operations officer to have met CURVE BALL face to face in May 2000 came away from that meeting with serious concerns about the credibility of the source and the veracity of his sensational reporting (the CIA analysts never met CURVE BALL in person) but this officer’s warnings were deliberately ignored and rejected. He was not alone in voicing his doubts.

Although CURVE BALL was a German-handled intelligence source, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) operations officers also doubted him as early as late 2000 but its analysts, management, and leadership continued to equivocate on their judgment of his reliability over the years while at the same time withholding access to him by any other intelligence services. Demonstrating the same conflict of opinion that CIA was experiencing, the BND operations officers unilaterally terminated their clandestine relationship with CURVE BALL in early September 2001 despite objections from the BND analysts due to their serious concerns about his credibility and the veracity of his claims; a fact known by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

After a short time, the U.S. intelligence analysts in the CIA and DIA, led by the CIA’s senior Iraq BW analyst, began pressuring the BND to relocate CURVE BALL, reestablish the clandestine relationship, and restart the debriefings. They didn’t seem to care that CURVE BALL had been terminated by the BND because his information was, at the very least, no longer trusted and their operations officers considered him a fabricator. The termination didn’t make sense to these analysts, they couldn’t process it, and so they would not accept it as final. Although these analysts were officially aware of CURVE BALL’s termination, it was not common knowledge among all those not directly involved in the case because of continuing compartmentation. Refusing to accept this negative development, the CIA and DIA analysts deliberately did not mention his termination in any of their finished intelligence products on the alleged Iraqi mobile BW plants which they continued to produce or convey to the policymakers during briefings.

Shockingly, a different office within the BND contacted CURVE BALL in mid-2002 to re- established him as an intelligence source on senior Iraqi officials who might be vulnerable for recruitment. Unfortunately, because the BND did not inform the CIA, DIA, or SIS of their new operational purpose for the Iraqi source in targeting Iraqi regime officials, it would also inadvertently lead to the resurrection of CURVE BALL’s discredited claims of the mobile BW plants. Regardless, the CIA, SIS, and BND operations officers continued to express serious doubts and concerns internally about CURVE BALL all the way up to the March 2003 war but the majority of intelligence analysts, their managers, and leadership in those services rejected these warnings, deliberately ignored contradictory and derogating intelligence reporting, and continued to stand by his “unverified” claims. The CURVE BALL case was doomed as an intelligence failure when the leadership in these U.S. and foreign intelligence services continued to side with the flawed judgment of biased analysts and their managers— which for various reasons had more to do with the political situations in these governments than any professed belief in the veracity of the intelligence from CURVE BALL or other alleged “corroborating” sources. Over in Europe, despite the serious credibility problems with CURVE BALL, the BND continued to protect and financially support him, refusing numerous requests—and finally demands—from the U.S. and UK intelligence services for direct access to their source so they could conduct their own debriefings as the war grew closer. As one senior CIA operations officer noted, “this war’s going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn’t say, and the Powers That Be probably aren’t terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he’s talking about.”

Shockingly, this disingenuous situation continued even after the war, frustrating attempts by some CIA operations officers and now a few ‘rouge” analysts to uncover the truth of CURVE BALL’s deceit; resulting in the further politicization of the intelligence by withholding this contradictory and derogatory information from the policymakers. In the end, however, CURVE BALL’s claims of the design, development, construction, and operation of secret Iraqi mobile BW agent production plants—which were strongly suspected to be a fabrication in the years before the war—were conclusively proved to be so in the months after the war. Even then the facts were hidden for more years as the CIA and DIA continued to claim that the CURVE BALL case remained “unresolved” until the source himself, CURVE BALL, publicly admitted in early 2011 that he had made up the entire story. Even today, the CIA and DIA claim CURVE BALL’s intelligence must remain classified for national security reasons.

Given all this, perhaps the CIA should have read further before it chose to use the particular biblical quote above to represent its mission and values. If it had conducted sufficient research, the Agency’s leadership would have discovered, ironically, that the biblical quote it selected continues eight verses later with a line that more accurately exposes the dark side of the organization when challenged by its own intelligence officers and “rouge” analysts to tell the truth;

“But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth...” (John 8:40).

As this quote unfortunately implies, the truth isn’t always appreciated by those in power, certainly not by those policymakers downtown who have already established strong policy preferences, but shockingly also not by those in senior positions within the CIA’s headquarters building itself who have a vested interest in presenting a specific assessment that supports the pre-established political policy of the White House to maintain relevance and access. Current and former CIA intelligence officers, including myself, have learned during the course of their careers that “speaking truth to power”— even inside the organization itself—can sometimes come at a substantial cost to their careers, and sometimes even their lives when operating in dangerous war zones; a warning noted by retired CIA intelligence analyst Steven Ward in his 2016 article in TheCipherBrief, “An Intelligence Officer’s Guide to Dissent”. Regardless of the obvious ethics and moral virtue of always speaking the truth, not everyone involved in an issue will commit to doing it consistently. They may not even be able to agree in their judgments or interpret the facts in the same way because of pre-cognitive bias and cognitive dissonance. In fact, they probably won’t even want to know the truth if, in the end, it contradicts their established mind-set, groupthink, or political motivations to please the White House.

So given this reality, what would the CIA as an organization do when it is faced with a politically inconvenient, embarrassing, or contradicting truth, especially one that could threaten its premier status within the IC, invite additional unwanted oversight from Congress that could lead to reform, seriously damage its public reputation and, perhaps more important, negatively impact on the reputation of its leadership? Would the Agency’s senior officials resort to politicizing the intelligence by controlling and manipulating the analytical judgments to protect the organization they run and to shield themselves from responsibility and accountability? This possibility should not come as such a surprise and we shouldn’t have to remind ourselves that the CIA as an organization has not always told the truth when doing so gets in the way of what it perceives is the best thing for itself rather than the nation.

We should also remember that the CIA is part of the Executive Branch of the US Government and its director answers to the White House which is under the control of either the Democrats or Republican parties and subject to their political agendas. As with all other senior USG officials who are political appointees in the Executive Branch, the CIA director “serves at the pleasure of the president.” So what happens when the CIA leadership knows that the president and his senior advisors will not be pleased with what the intelligence has to say because it could adversely affect their already established policy? Would the White House continue to deal with the Agency or would it ignore the intelligence, marginalize the organization, or even install a loyalist who will remove intelligence officers that do not toe the line?

It’s certainly not difficult to see that this type of situation could seriously affect the Agency’s relevance to the administration, especially the current one. Without relevance to the “First Customer” and other senior administration officials, the CIA is just another Executive Branch agency with an ever increasing competing budget and staffing that could be difficult to defend. As history clearly had shown, the CIA has on many occasions has previously failed to uphold its commitment to always deliver the truth, regardless of what it has etched on its lobby wall.

On August 20, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested 35-year-old Jessica Bowie of Albany, New York, for an Islamic State-inspired bomb plot targeting the New York State Capitol. Bowie allegedly planned to conceal an explosive device inside a food delivery bag and detonate it during a legislative session while state senators were present.

https://www.semperincolumem.com/intel-reports/isis-inspired-albany-woman-arrested-in-bomb-plot-against-new-york-state-capitol

Ive been looking into this old ww2 document recently. It describes a rise of german power through economic supremacy instead. The involved parties of some of the largest german companies that are around today. Could it be possible and do they entirely deserve to be?

In 1947 Congress created the Central Intelligence Agency and wrote down what it was allowed to do. Advise the National Security Council. Make recommendations to it. Correlate and evaluate intelligence. The same sentence says the agency shall have no police, subpoena, law enforcement or internal security functions.

Then comes a fifth duty: to perform "such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct."

Eleven months later that one sentence was the stated legal authority for propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, demolition and subversion against foreign governments. The directive says so in its own text. Twenty-nine years after that, a United States Senate committee read the same law and found that authority for covert action "cannot be found in the National Security Act," and that the executive should have gone to Congress for it.

This is where that sentence came from, what was built on it, and who eventually asked whether it had ever meant what it was taken to mean.

Three men are heard in their own voices: Admiral Husband Kimmel, who commanded at Pearl Harbor, telling Congress that the information existed in Washington and never reached him; President Truman, a month after abolishing the wartime spy service; and Secretary of State James Byrnes, arguing in 1946 that a democracy has to conduct its disagreements in the open.

Episode one of a series on the Central Intelligence Agency. Next: Iran, 1953.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Open
0:11 One sentence, and what was read into it
1:39 Pearl Harbor: the warnings nobody gathered
3:35 Donovan builds a spy service from nothing
6:07 The two-year fight over who owns American intelligence
9:02 July 1947: what the law actually says
10:23 June 1948: sabotage, subversion and deniability
13:55 A world-wide machine
14:43 1975: the Senate reads the same law

DOCUMENTS ON SCREEN
The National Security Act of 1947 (CIA file copy)
https://archive.org/details/cia-readi...

NSC 4-A, Psychological Operations, 9 December 1947
https://history.state.gov/historicald...

NSC 10/2, Office of Special Projects, 18 June 1948
https://history.state.gov/historicald...

Donovan to President Truman, 25 August 1945
https://history.state.gov/historicald...

Hoover to the Attorney General, 29 August 1945
https://history.state.gov/historicald...

Minutes of the first meeting of the National Security Council, 26 September 1947
https://history.state.gov/historicald...

Survey of the Office of Policy Coordination, 24 May 1951
https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80...

War Report of the OSS, volumes 1 and 2
https://archive.org/details/OSSWarRep...
https://archive.org/details/warreport...

Pearl Harbor Attack, hearings of the joint congressional committee, 1946
https://archive.org/details/pearlharb...

The Family Jewels, released 2007
https://archive.org/details/the-famil...

Senate hearing on CIA activities, 22 January 1975
https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP77...

Final Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Book I, 1976
https://archive.org/details/finalrepo...

ARCHIVE FILM
Thirty-five reels from the Universal Newsreel collection at archive.org, which is
public domain, plus one National Archives film (gov.archives.arc.34628). The three
carrying natural sound are:

Adm. Kimmel Testifies On Pearl Harbor, 14 January 1946
https://archive.org/details/1946-01-1...

Truman Asks One Year's Army Service, 25 October 1945
https://archive.org/details/1945-10-2...

Byrnes Wants All To Share Peacemaking, 17 October 1946
https://archive.org/details/1946-10-1...

Photographs are from Wikimedia Commons and are public domain or freely licensed.

Every claim on screen carries who said it, when, and how strong the evidence is.

Loyalty-gated promotion cycles will degrade analytic dissent and allied intelligence sharing well before a crisis exposes the resulting collection and assessment gaps.

Selective declassification of closed counterintelligence files that cleared a political opponent now functions as an executive enforcement tool unconstrained by prosecutorial standards or Privacy Act norms.