CIA Director John Ratcliffe Visits Moscow Unannounced – US Media

What is going on? It seems this visit is highly unusual!

"CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a surprise visit to Moscow, U.S. officials said.

 

Ratcliffe spent about four hours in the Russian capital before leaving. The reason for the visit wasn’t immediately clear. It came as intelligence collected by the U.S. showed Russia’s preparations for a possible military mobilization in Ukraine. The CIA declined to comment."

CIA Director John Ratcliffe Visits Moscow Unannounced – US Media "In brief: A US Air Force C-17 military transport plane landed in Moscow on Tuesday, Aug. 25 after flying from Riga, raising questions about the mission. CBS News later reported that CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Moscow for meetings with Russian authorities. Ahead of the trip, Washington reportedly asked Ukraine to temporarily refrain from striking Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to Axious and Suspilne."

The Wall Street Journal What's news

CIA’s deep partnership with Ukrainian intelligence that began more than a decade ago

Very recommendable!

Internal CIA documents, presentation show effort to mandate DEI at the center of the intel agency

Not even the CIA was spared from this ideological nonsense! Insane!

That the CIA even has a Chief Diversity Officer is a scandal!

Quite dangerous to the mission of the CIA!

DEI must die!

Internal CIA documents, presentation show effort to mandate DEI at the center of the intel agency | Just The News "The CIA’s chief diversity officer earlier this year described his department’s efforts to ingrain DEI across the agency in hiring decisions and trainings."

Birth of the CIA - Allen Dulles

Very recommendable! What an amazing biography! The Iran coup of 1953 is certainly controversial, but defensible given the circumstances.

Dulles was probably too long in high government office for his own good!

CIA Director William Burns: Spycraft and Statecraft. Really!

What a pathetic title by a member of the administration of the senile, demented, and corrupt 46th U.S. President!

I did not have the time to read his whole, long essay, but I picked up a few things. It contains also a number of platitudes (like "“Nothing can make you prouder than to serve your country with honor.”"). 

I think, William Burns (age 67, reactivated from retirement) is unqualified for the job! Clearly, he seems ideologically biased if not a joker! Apparently, he is also responsible for the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

E.g. how much did the CIA know about the October 7 attack by Hamas and how did the CIA inform the Israeli government?

"... As President Joe Biden has reiterated, the United States faces one of those rare moments today, as consequential as the dawn of the Cold War or the post-9/11 period. China’s rise and Russia’s revanchism pose daunting geopolitical challenges in a world of intense strategic competition in which the United States no longer enjoys uncontested primacy [???] and in which existential climate threats [???] are mounting. ...

That’s why the president sent me to Kabul in late August of 2021 to engage with the Taliban leadership just before the final withdrawal of U.S. troops. ...
We’re also working hard to diversify our workforce [???], reaching historic highs in 2023 in terms of the number of women and minority officers hired, as well as the number promoted into the agency’s most senior ranks. ...

At a moment when trust in the United States’ public institutions is often in short supply, the CIA remains a resolutely apolitical institution [???] ..."

William Burns: Spycraft and Statecraft Transforming the CIA for an Age of Competition

Opinion: How Washington Misunderstood Putin since at least 2005 like the current Director of the CIA

Recommendable! Another apologist of Putin the Terrible!

It looks like there are a lot of fools in the administration of the senile, demented and corrupt 46th President! Here is another one!

"Williams J. Burns is widely considered the most skillful US diplomat of his generation. He boasts a golden career, including ambassadorship to Moscow 2005-8, Undersecretary of State for Policy, and Deputy Secretary of State. He has served in top positions under both democrats and republicans. ...

In 2019, Burns published his highly acclaimed memoir, The Back Channel: American Diplomacy in a Disordered World. Given his current prominence, I have just finished reading it to try to figure out where he actually stands on Russia and Ukraine. ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has actually been remarkably transparent, and Burns reports it well. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Putin in Moscow in 2005, he stated: “Saakashvili is nothing more than a puppet of the United States.” He continued: “If Georgia causes bloodshed in Ossetia, I will have no alternative to recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and responding with force” (p. 202). 

Already then, Putin threatened to attack Georgia. One would have expected the US to respond forcefully and prepare measures against Russian expansionism (sharp statements, threats of sanctions, arms deliveries). Yet, Burns simply states: “Putin’s pugnacity left an impression.”

Burns expresses contempt for former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who launched Russia’s freedom and economic reforms, while he is respectful of Putin: “He seemed in many ways the anti-Yeltsin – half a generation younger, sober, ruthlessly competent, hardworking, and hard-faced, he offered promise for Russians tired of the Yeltsin-era chaos and disorder” (p. 206). ...
Burns continues: “Putin made a brutal object lesson of the billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003, seizing his oil and gas company, Yukos, and sending him to prison.” Putin’s absence of good values is mentioned just in passing where Burns states that he “has never been a democratizer” (p. 207). ...
Instead of taking Putin’s new aggression seriously, Burns acts like a psychotherapist, seeing his speech as “the self-absorbed product of 15 years of accumulate Russian frustrations and grievances…Putin was giving voice to the pent-up frustrations of many Russians” (p. 224). Well, so did Adolf Hitler in Weimar, Germany, and we knew how that ended. ..."

Opinion: How Washington Misunderstood Putin Re-reading the memoirs of a top US diplomat who now heads the CIA, one understands how badly Washington, Berlin and France got Russia wrong – for which we are all now paying.

William J. Burns, Director of the CIA

The Rise and Fall of the CIA | Sam Faddis

Very recommendable! Very concerning! Ever wondered why it took the CIA and other U.S. intelligence services to locate Osama bin Laden?

Tucker Carlson: Was the CIA involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? Possibly!

Very recommendable! To this day, thousands of CIA documents related to the assassination are not made public despite Congressional requests!

Inside the CIA’s top secret museum

A curious museum indeed! It is not open to the public!

The CIA Spent 20 Years on the Front Lines of the War on Terror. It’s Time For That to Change

Recommendable! However, remember that the CIA is only one of over a dozen or so intelligence services of the U.S.

Was there mission creep or the mixing of military and intelligence objectives going on? This opinion peace suggests so! E.g. too often CIA directors and top Pentagon officials rotate.

"... But the integration of intelligence and warfighting may have been the most promising — and problematic — change of all.

Before 9/11, who did what was much clearer: The military fought wars; the CIA collected and analyzed intelligence (and carried out covert operations when it was important to hide official U.S. involvement). After the terror attacks, though, those distinctions blurred, fast. The CIA jumped into Afghanistan and became deeply involved in the day-to-day prosecution of the global war on terror. ...
Twenty years after 9/11, the United States faces escalating threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, conflict in cyberspace as well as physical space, and global challenges like climate change and pandemics. The CIA needs to regain the balance between fighting the terrorist enemies of today and providing the intelligence to detect, understand and stop the enemies of tomorrow. ..."

Opinion | The CIA Spent 20 Years on the Front Lines of the War on Terror. It’s Time For That to Change. - POLITICO An enduring legacy of the global war on terror is an approach to intelligence that doesn’t serve U.S. national security interests as it once did.

CIA doubles down on 'woke' recruitment

The cognitively impaired 46th President of the United States makes the enemies laugh again! Here is my blog post regarding the previous recruitment video by the CIA!

Tucker Carlson takes aim at 'woke' CIA recruitment ad

Very recommendable! Meet the Kim Philby of wokeness or the as usual unhinged former CIA Director under President Obama and swamp creature John Brennan!

Faulty US Intel Report on Khashoggi Death Meant to Topple Saudi Crown Prince, Woo Iran

Recommendable! I agree with much of what is contained in this opinion piece. The main question is why would the crown prince take on such an enormous risk to get rid of a journalist by killing him? 

This so called short report does not contain any evidence! Almost all of it is rather speculative and amateurish! The only link to MBS mentioned is that the alleged members of the team that supposedly captured and/or killed Kashoggi (his body was never recovered) were closely associated with MBS.

"... So, when the CIA authors a report on the death of a Saudi journalist at the hands of Saudi henchmen, it isn’t surprising that the report, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), fingers Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. What is surprising that the report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi is just three-quarters of a page of amateurish innuendo. ...
We don’t know whether the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s murder, or ordered his capture, or ordered anything at all. ...
The report is more an indictment of the politicization of the CIA than a document that tells the government anything worthwhile about Saudi Arabia. ...
And even if we did know for sure, why would we seek to create a political crisis in Saudi Arabia, an important ally, and a major oil producer? ...

In fact, the report was released by the administration to topple the crown prince from power. It doesn’t matter whether the report is credible—it matters that President Joe Biden says it is. And it matters that it works in favor of Iran. Biden is on a “charm offensive” to woo the Iranians back into negotiations over a new pact on the Iranian nuclear program. The Iranians expect to be paid in advance and undermining Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a hot ticket. ...

Therefore, the report is best understood in context with other reckless moves by the Biden administration: “freezing” arms sales to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, halting intelligence assistance to the Arab Coalition opposing the Houthis, removing the Houthis from the terror list, ...

Biden’s delay in calling Israel’s prime minister is part of the same policy, as is significant backtracking on reaffirming U.S. policy over Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and undermining the Abraham Accords by halting the sale of F-35s to the UAE. ...
Even while President Donald Trump was in office, John Kerry was meeting with Iran’s foreign minister, working out the framework of a deal once Biden was elected. While this most certainly was a violation of the Logan Act ..."

Some excerpts from the 4 pages report:

"... Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom's security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince's authorization. ...

At the time of the Khashoggi murder, the Crown Prince probably fostered an environment in which aides were afraid that failure to complete assigned tasks might result in him firing or arresting them. This suggests that the aides were unlikely to question Muhammad bin Salman's orders or undertake sensitive actions without his consent. ...
The IS-member Saudi team that arrived in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 included officials who worked for, or were associated with, the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs (CSMARC) at the Royal Court. At the time of the operation, CSMARC was led by Saud al-Qahtani, a close adviser of Muhammad bin Salman ...

The team also included seven members of Muhammad bin Salman's elite personal protective detail, known as the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF). The RIF-a subset of the Saudi Royal Guard-exists to defend the Crown Prince, answers only to him, and had directly participated in earlier dissident suppression operations in the Kingdom and abroad at the Crown Prince's direction. We judge that members of the RIF would not have

participated in the operation against Khashoggi without Muhammad bin Salman's approval. ...

We have high confidence that the following individuals participated in, ordered, or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for the death of Jamal Khashoggi on behalf of Muhammad bin Salman. We do not know whether these individuals knew in advance that the operation would result

in Khashoggi's death. ..."

Faulty US Intel Report on Khashoggi Death Meant to Topple Saudi Crown Prince, Woo Iran (sort of behind a paywall)

Here is a link to the CIA report as it was published by the Washington Compost:

CIA Report Kashoggi