Enduring tales of CIA and KGB
To say that Donald Trump was, or is a KGB asset sounds like saying Fidel Castro was a CIA asset. The Agency certainly obtained a lot of propaganda mileage and money from beating out Fidel is a mortal threat for more than a generation. After the Bay of Pigs, the CIA also regarded Kennedy as traitorous Castro asset. He could have taken Castro down, the Agency thought, and didnāt.
Now the CIA regards Trump as a Putin asset. Beware use of the word asset, however. The CIA liberally applies that noun to anyone who serves in its informal network, and that network is big. To take a famous example, Lee Oswald was a CIA asset. How he came to be one is another story. No one thinks he was a traitor because he worked for a U.S. intelligence agency.
What would it take for Trump to be a KGB asset? The basic arrangement - no money involved - would be a you-help-me-and-Iāll-help-you arrangement. People have speculated, for example, that Trump might owe a sum of money to one or more Russian oligarchs. If they forgive the loan, or give him easy terms, they might expect something in return. Putin might expect something in return. That would make Trump a Russian asset.
Of course, we donāt know about Trumpās loans. A man who makes shady business deals does not publicize shady loans. If Russia has any other kind of leverage over Trump, we would not know about that, either. All we know is that, since 2016, the CIA has consistently claimed collusion between Trump and Putin. The CIA charges that Putin wants to use Trump to weaken American democracy.
This charge that Trump is a Russian asset exasperates every time the CIA levels it because the CIA expects us to believe it. It wants us to take something on faith from an agency that acts in bad faith at every turn. It wants us to take something on faith from an agency that never reveals its sources or methods, to anyone, not even the president. Do you suppose the CIA ever revealed its sources and methods for this accusation to Trump, while he was president? You can bet they did not.
Thatās how far we have come. The nationās principal intelligence agency publicly accuses the president of being a traitor, for the whole time he holds office, and never bothers to substantiate the charge. We know the CIA can be creative with its information when it wants to be. It can offer a ālimited hangoutā, as people called it in the 1970s, when the CIA had to make decisions about what to reveal to the Church Committee, and the House Committee on Assassinations.
Not this time. Perhaps the 1970s taught the Agency a limited hangout is not worth the trouble. Plus no one asked for one. Even President Obama declined to press the CIA for evidence when the Agency accused Russia with interference in our presidential election. Wouldnāt the president want to know how his intelligence analysts reached such a grave conclusion, about events that occurred on his watch.
Apparently not. After eight years of trying not to offend Putin and company in Moscow, Obama decides to expel a passel of Russian diplomats from the U.S. on the CIAās say-so. You might say, of course the Agency briefed the president on the evidence, before the president took action. Thatās not how politics works in Washington, though. When the president takes action with no substantiation of the charge, Obama looks like the CIAās tool and gull. The rest of the world watches and thinks, āWell we donāt like Putin, but we donāt like Obama either. Why does Obama act like the CIA owns him?ā
The CIA is still at it. Two presidents after Obama, it avers not only that Putin and company resumed their dirty tricks for the 2020 election, but also that he ran the White House as an extension of the Kremlin. Thatās what it means, in CIA-speak, to say that Trump was a Putin asset. It means Putin was his handler. Putin knows how intelligence works. He would know how to handle that role.
So you have to ask, why does the CIA act this way, over such a long period? Itās main job is to brief the president about world affairs, yet it couldnāt be bothered with telling the president about events unfolding in Ukraine and Crimea. How do we know? The president was surprised by every Russian action in the region! The CIA also did not seem so interested in helping the president navigate events in Syria and Iraq, two other countries where we seemed to have no intelligence capacity at all.
Yet the CIA has no trouble leveling serious charges against Moscow, independent of the White House! If the Agency is supposed to be so secret, why does it take a public role in making accusations that belong to the president? When Khrushchev parked nuclear warheads and missiles down the road from Havana, who announced those developments the American people? It wasnāt the Director of Central Intelligence. Kennedy went on television and presented the evidence. He did not need to say a lot about the CIAās sources and methods.
Where does this arrogance come from? Has the CIA not had enough humbling experiences over the last seventy-five years or so, to make it a little more cautious about how it behaves in public? You might say that every disaster in U.S. foreign policy since WWII, every catastrophe nearby or far away, every irreversible mistake somehow grew out of CIAās underhanded schemes and crimes.
By comparison, I suppose you could say that accusing the Russians of election interference is a small enough act, yet the Agency has established a pattern now. They are on their third president, where the CIA does not defer to the presidentās authority or role. They are on their third president, where the second one, Donald Trump, was the actual target of the Agencyās accusations.
Moreover, Trumpās Democratic opponents found nothing wrong with that kind of behavior. If the FBI could so plainly oppose the president in public, why not the CIA as well? Both agencies handle secret information, so why not make the equivalent of anonymous accusations, including serious accusations of betrayal against your own chief executive?
A final note in this sad story is that it was not only Democratic spinners and staffers who jumped on the CIA accusation train. High personages in John Brennan, James Clapper, and Hillary Clinton did likewise. In fact, you could say the spinners and staffers just followed the personagesā lead, given all the prestige they trail with them. Who would not believe people like that?
My reply stays the same. Show me some evidence.
Progressives insist to this day that Trump operated on behalf of Putin and Russia intelligence, for God knows how far back. Progressives also believe that Hillary Clinton is not a conspiracy theorist, that Robert Mueller was mistaken because he did not see things their way, and that the Russia collusion hypothesis, because it is true, is not a conspiracy theory.
I suppose the conspiracies the CIA has engaged in are not conspiracies, either because no one acknowledges they happened, or because no conspiracy is a conspiracy if it actually did happen. Either way, no observer will force you to subscribe to a particular theory about conspiracy theories. If you accuse Trump and Putin of hatching a conspiracy to undermine American democracy, you find a lot of takers for that bet. People will latch onto, or reject that theory for their own reasons.
One thing you can say: Trump, Castro, Putin, and Kennedy may all get together for a beer summit in paradise. Barack Obama will host. Members of the CIA and KGB will bring their own beer. The only people flummoxed at that point will be conspiracy theorists, and theorists who say conspiracies donāt exist.
