Yes, The US Intelligence Community Routinely Lies

I was amused by the absurd by the faux shock expressed in headlines last week, which trumpeted the U.S. Intelligence Community backflip on its previous claim that Russia was paying the Taliban bounties to whack U.S. military personnel. Sure, it reminded me of Gilda Radner’s quirky Saturday night live character, Emily Litella, whose trademark was to do a rant about a particular issues, such as “banning violins” on TV only to be told by Chevy Chase that the word was “violence.” Dear Emily would then close with this memorable phrase, “Never Mind.”

And so it is with our pathetic, feckless intelligence community. It is a sick clown show devoid of accountability. But the Gateway Pundit writers, including moi, were calling bullshit on the so-called intelligence from the outset last summer. Here are the links to two of those articles:

Bounties for Taliban? The New Big Russia Lie (July 2, 2020)

It took almost a year for the U.S. Intel Community to come clean and admit they had no genuine intelligence. They fabricated this garbage and the Daily Beast (an early cheerleader for the bogus story) ate some major crow:

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.

But this is not a new phenomena. The intelligence community, especially my old outfit–the CIA–has a long, sordid record of lies, inaccuracies, and screw-ups.

Ever hear of Samuel A. Adams? (I am not talking about the patriot of 1776 or the Beer-maker using his name.) I am talking about the Sam Adams who make his reputation blowing the whistle on lies about the number of Viet Cong guerrillas. He was a hero and a victim as a consequence of his battles with a crooked CIA leadership and a corrupt U.S. military.

He is best known for his role in discovering that during the mid-1960s American military intelligence had underestimated the number of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers. Although his opinion was challenged, he pushed the case for a higher troop count. The issue under debate was called the Order of Battle (O/B). His efforts in 1967 met strong and persistent opposition from the Army (here MACV) which, in the short-term, prevailed against him. . . .

In the role of a “generalist” and “roving analyst”, Adams was assigned to study the Viet Cong. . . . While doing this perplexing research, Adams discovered that in the provinces the ARVN‘s count of the VC guerrillas and militia was often much higher than MACV‘s, e.g., in Long An province it was 2000 to 160. He got permission to “look into enemy manpower”. . .

From his research into captured enemy documents and other sources, he “concluded that previous estimates had undercounted the communists by hundreds of thousands. The implications were astounding.”^[29] If the Viet Cong enemy combatant count was higher, it implied that the prospects for a South Vietnamese military victory were dimmed. It questioned American claims of progress on the battlefield. It’d be “politically disastrous” for the U.S. government.

If you are younger than 65, you have probably never heard of this Sam Adams. Sam was fortunate that he came from a wealthy family. He used that asset to his benefit. He was not afraid to challenge the bullshit being disseminated by the CIA and the Department of Defense because he was wealthy. He did not have to fear being fired and losing his house or the ability to pay for his kids college education. He had other colleagues and sympathizers at the CIA, particularly his immediate boss, George Allen, author of None So Blind. George tried to fight the senior leaders at the CIA but he faced the financial threat. If he persisted in protesting he would be fired and would have lost the ability to provide for his wife and their college bound children.

This corrupt system, sadly, has not changed. We just have new names and faces of lackeys and sell outs in leadership positions who quash any attempt by honest analysts to tell the truth. It happened in Vietnam. It happened in the lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It happened in promoting the damnable fiction that Donald Trump was a stooge of Putin. And now it happened again with the calumny that Russia was paying a bounty to the Taliban to kill our troops and Donald Trump did nothing.

So here is my suggestion going forward–if the intel community claims something as fact without irrefutable evidence, do not believe them. Our ridiculous intelligence community is founded on a legacy of lies.

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