National Security in the hands of "Crackpots and Fools"

[PeterRS]

So another batch of Trump picks are virual idiots! That's the view of long-time chronicler of the spy agency the CIA, Tim Weiner. His latest book "The Mission" is due out next week. As he states in an interview in today's Guardian -  

imagine spending years as an intelligence officer, working diligently to subvert the Kremlin, only to watch the US stand with Russia, Iran and North Korea, as it did in February when it voted against a UN resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine. In that moment, Weiner said: “You come to the realization, if you hadn’t already: ‘My God, the president of the United States has gone over to the other side. He has joined the authoritarian axis.’”

Wener has followed the CIA for some 40 years as a former national security correspondent for The New York Times. With his rolodex filled with insiders prepared to leak out little bits and pieces, he knows a great deal of what he writes. Not all is about Trump. In fact he spends a good deal of the book examining the CIA's many failures. Although he does not go back as far as the first overseas foray when it overthrew the legitimately elected Prime Minister of Iran and what all that was eventually to lead with the Isalmic Revoution, it failed to spot the rise of Al-Qaida, it had incorrect intel about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, it knew little about what became the Arab Spring and "other screw ups".

"But it’s the book’s final chapters, which find the organization blindsided by Russia’s influence operation on behalf of Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency, that readers may find most striking. Weeks before the election, Russia’s intelligence services, with an assist from WikiLeaks, began releasing a trove of hacked Democratic National Committee emails, dealing a devastating blow to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It was, as Weiner puts it in The Mission, “an audacious act of political warfare [that] helped elect a demagogue president of the United States”. Weiner dismisses the theory that Trump is a Russian asset, but says it’s beside the point. “He’s Russia’s ally.”

Another little gem from the book -

“Donald Trump hates the CIA,” Weiner said, noting that Trump considers the agency the beating heart of a “deep state” that he believes is working to undermine him. Consequently, the president has appointed “a coterie of dangerously incompetent and servile acolytes to the highest positions of national security”. Weiner describes the new CIA director, John Ratcliffe – a former personal injury attorney, Maga congressman and, briefly, director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term – as “a spineless person who will do whatever Trump tells him to do . . . He’s attempting to rid the CIA of its most experienced officers,” Weiner said, “and to impose ideological purity tests. Ratcliffe said explicitly from the get-go that he aimed to align the leadership of the CIA with the president’s view of the world. Since the president’s view of the world is largely based on falsehoods and imaginary enemies, I think this will be an extremely difficult task.”

He concludes the interview - 

“What keeps me up at night,” he [Weiner] continued, “is the fact that Trump has put the instruments of American national security in the hands of crackpots and fools, and that their incompetence and ideological blinkers will blind them to a coming attack. If the United States gets hit again under Trump, he will destroy what is left of our democracy.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/15/tim-weiner-cia-trump

[Moses]

by ChatGPT:

About The Mission

Full title: The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century

Release date: July 15, 2025 (mainstream hardcover and digital editions)

Length: ~460 pages

Price: Around $17.99–35 depending on the edition

Summary: A follow-up to Legacy of Ashes, this book explores the CIA's evolution from 9/11 to the present day, focusing on operations related to China, Russia, terrorism, and internal institutional crises.

Key Reviews

1. The Guardian
The book critically examines how the CIA became a “secret army” for U.S. presidents, delving into operations like Iran–Contra, post-9/11 torture programs, and the agency’s political suppression under Trump.

Weiner cites “untouchable sources” inside the CIA and conveys the agency’s frustration over political appointments like John Ratcliffe.

2. Associated Press (AP)
Described as “gripping and disturbing,” the book portrays the CIA’s shift into a paramilitary force involved in torture and extrajudicial killings after 9/11.

Includes shocking details, such as the freezing death of a detainee in Bagram and the White House pressuring the agency to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Key Themes

Shift from Intelligence to Warfare: The CIA morphed into a strike force, operating secret prisons, drones, and kill lists, drifting far from its intelligence roots.

Political Manipulation: The agency was pushed by presidents to act outside its scope and take on military roles.

Unprecedented Access: Weiner interviewed 6 former CIA directors, 13 station chiefs, and many agents, many of whom spoke publicly for the first time.

Institutional Self-Criticism: The book includes harrowing real-life failures, from missed warnings about 9/11 to internal dysfunction.

Lack of Prescriptions: Despite its powerful critique, the book does not clearly lay out how to reform the agency or protect it from future abuse.

[PeterRS]

Having read about the CIA's adventures from the receiving end of those countries and individuals it sought to influence, I have little admiration for it. Formed out of the OSS after WWII, it became almost an out-of-control body of US influence - some might add a stronger word, "madness". From the moment it went into bed with the British to overthrow Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953 and give power back to the shy, timid and, it was assumed malleable, Shah, despite billions in weaoponry and aid, it stood back as it oversaw the country'sin  descent into a political and religious morass which remains to this day. 

Its incursions into Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia did nothing but make the resultant war even more bloody - and probably prolonged it. Indeed war and conflict were its primary weapons. Fortunately for it, it had a strong backer in Washington in Henry Kissinger, a man whom many now consider should have been charged with war crimes. Apart from Indo-China (where in the illegal incursion into Cambodia he selected the bombing targets and had given instructions to "bomb anything that moves" - a result of which drove masses of Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge), his deliberate interference allied with turning a blind eye also resulted in wars in Indonesia/East Timor, Pakistan/East Pakistan now Bangladesh, Chile, Argentina and goodness knows where else. Without his blessing and thus the blessing of whichever US administration was in power, it is quite likely that some of the resultant bloodshed would not have happened, or would have been signifcantly reduced. He had the blood of maybe more than 10 million on his shoulders, and yet he was lauded within the US as a great statesman. Kissinger was a criminal! 

His instument of war and terror was of course the CIA. And both were perfectly well aware of what they were doing. As the Ambassadors of both Pakistan and India informed Kissinger, the US was participating in "genocide" in East Pakistan. Kissinger called the Indian Ambassador "a traitor" and fired his counterpart in East Pakistan. Genocide was a word the US used for other countries. It was never one to start a genocide, was the belief. 

The Internatioal Criminal Court was not established until 1998. Kissinger was then 85 and could have been hauled before it. But it was George Bush II who proclaimed that no American would ever attend proceedings of the court for whatever reason. He was perfectly well aware that the CIA, Kissinger, quite a few of his administration members, especially those involved in the invasion of Iraq, and individual US soldiers would be in danger of facing justice. All escaped.