Steven Plaut: The Leftwingers Who Have Emerged from the CIA
The Left has long painted the CIA as a far-Right neofascist bogeyman, dominated by reactionary Dr. Strangeloves, and paranoid “neoncons.” The reality, of course, has long been very different. In fact, the CIA has long been dominated by liberal ideology and the left-leaning, blame-America mindset. Those who are skeptical of this last assertion should read one of the most important books ever written about intelligence services: Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century by Angelo Codevilla. In this book, to which I cannot do full justice here, he shows how the many failures of the CIA trace back to its kneejerk liberalism and politically correct delusions. (See a more detailed review here.)
The liberal mindset of the CIA has not only led to a long series of grave errors in judgment and gross misreadings of many international situations; it has also led it to hire large numbers of radicals into its ranks. The extent of the damage done by such people can only be guessed, but a good idea of the dimensions can be gleaned from observing the behavior of the growing number of far-left ex-CIA employees running about in the anti-America movement today.
Leftists emerging from the shadows of the American intelligence community are of course nothing new. The most famous postwar example was no doubt Daniel Ellsberg, who has spent his later years as a button man for the far Left. Ellsberg, however, was never actually employed by the CIA, but by RAND. Others, at least as radical as him, were. Of those, the worst is arguably Philip Agee, who left the CIA and published the seditious Covert Action Information Bulletin, with the help of both the KGB and the Cuban DGI, a magazine dedicated to promoting "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel." Agee told Swiss journalist Peter Studer, “The CIA is plainly on the wrong side, that is, the capitalistic side. I approve KGB activities, communist activities in general. Between the overdone activities that the CIA initiates and the more modest activities of the KGB, there is absolutely no comparison.” Today Agee runs a website from his home in Havana, Cubalinda.com, and is a dedicated communist.
In recent years, veterans of the CIA who were employed by the Agency have emerged as some of the most extremist bashers of America in the ”antiwar movement”. One well-known example is Michael Scheuer, who anonymously penned Imperial Hubris, a book critical of the conduct of the war on terrorism since the mid-1990s. Scheuer had been assigned to create a “bin Laden desk” at the CIA. After resigning from the Agency, he went on a campaign against the US invasion of Iraq, warning that Moslems worldwide were growing to hate the US because of its “policies”, and in particular he blamed US support for Israel for anti-American terrorism. He considers bin Laden to be a “great man”.
Former CIA agent Melvin Goodman holds roughly similar political opinions, claims the CIA is being used to recruit public opinion and undermine domestic opposition to Bush’s policies, and is similarly politically active and tied to leftist groups. He denounces the CIA for its failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, although gives no evidence that he had himself predicted any such collapse before it occurred. Goodman also seems to endorse 9-11 conspiracy “theories”. Appearing at Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s hearings, which featured panelists who posited theories on 9/11 ranging from the Twin Towers coming down as a result of a “controlled demolition” to the Pentagon being blown up deliberately and not partially destroyed by a hijacked aircraft, Goodman was quoted as saying about McKinney, “I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom.”
Of those leftist ex-agents of the CIA who are publicly active in leftist policics, most are also openly anti-Semitic, with deep ties not only to radical leftist groups but also to neonazi and Holocaust Denial organizations and web sites; the most notable illustration is the husband-and-wife team of William and Kathleen Christison, to whom we will return shortly.
Radical leftist ex-CIA employees are not as rare as one might suppose. Several of them in fact have banded together to form the “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity”. This was founded by one Ray McGovern, who once worked in the CIA’s Russian desk before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and claims his group now contains 35 disgruntled ex-employees who left the Agency. William (“Bill”) Christison was a member of its “steering committee”, and his wife Kathleen a rank and file member. Another member, David MacMichael, has helped promote the urban myths about the CIA being involved in the drug trade. When Danny Casolaro, a Washington D.C. freelance investigator, was found dead in a hotel room, evidently having committed suicide, MacMichael helped fabricate a “theory” that the CIA or FBI had murdered him, a theory that has naturally been “adopted” by dozens of conspiracist web sites.
Whatever the true size of VIPS’ membership, the group has acted as little more than a far-left anti-American group, allied with some of the most extremist organizations in the “antiwar movement”, and having a special obsession with bashing Israel. Its members have appeared in several far-leftist video “documentaries”, including “Uncovered: the Whole Truth About the Iraq War” (Robert Greenwald) and “Break the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror” (John Pilger). In a rather typical statement in February 2003, the group blamed all of the problems in the Middle East on Israel.
VIPS’ Ray McGovern repeatedly blamed Israel for the 9-11 attacks, such as in a letter to the Christian Science Monitor just days after 9-11. In an interview in the left-wing Sojourners magazine, he claimed, “The war on Iraq was just as much prompted by the strategic objectives of the state of Israel as it was the strategic objectives of the United States.” He has repeated the claim that Israel is manipulating and controlling American foreign policy, and comes within inches of ranting about some grand Jewish cabal and conspiracy. He has accused Bush of being “out of his mind”. His articles appear on the pro-terror antiwar.com web site and in other similarly extremist web magazines. He claims to believe that the US was planning to “plant” weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the invasion, an assertion that long ago became part of the canon on conspiracist web magazines. His evidence was to claim that American intelligence had lied during World War II and in other arenas of operations. Today he is involved in some leftist church group and he is a booster for Cindy Sheehan.
“Bill” Christison’s bio claims that he joined the CIA in 1950 and served on the analysis side of the Agency for 28 years. He later served as National Intelligence Officer in several areas in the Third World and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. His main take on the 9-11 attacks on America was that they were the comeuppance the US deserved for its unjust foreign policies and especially for its criminal support of Israel’s determination not to be annihilated. He opposes any American military action at all against Islamic terrorists, and instead suggests that they be dealt with by having their demands met.
The “Uruknet” web site of Iraqi Ba’athist pro-Saddam exiles has published at least five Christison articles. There is little about Saddam Hussein that Bill does not like and ditto for North Korea. He has written: “Largely because North Korea already has a few nuclear weapons, the U.S. has been deterred from the kind of aggressive action it has employed against non-nuclear Iraq, and has been forced to rely on diplomacy. And that's a good thing. (emphasis added)”...
Read entire article at frontpagemag.com
The liberal mindset of the CIA has not only led to a long series of grave errors in judgment and gross misreadings of many international situations; it has also led it to hire large numbers of radicals into its ranks. The extent of the damage done by such people can only be guessed, but a good idea of the dimensions can be gleaned from observing the behavior of the growing number of far-left ex-CIA employees running about in the anti-America movement today.
Leftists emerging from the shadows of the American intelligence community are of course nothing new. The most famous postwar example was no doubt Daniel Ellsberg, who has spent his later years as a button man for the far Left. Ellsberg, however, was never actually employed by the CIA, but by RAND. Others, at least as radical as him, were. Of those, the worst is arguably Philip Agee, who left the CIA and published the seditious Covert Action Information Bulletin, with the help of both the KGB and the Cuban DGI, a magazine dedicated to promoting "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel." Agee told Swiss journalist Peter Studer, “The CIA is plainly on the wrong side, that is, the capitalistic side. I approve KGB activities, communist activities in general. Between the overdone activities that the CIA initiates and the more modest activities of the KGB, there is absolutely no comparison.” Today Agee runs a website from his home in Havana, Cubalinda.com, and is a dedicated communist.
In recent years, veterans of the CIA who were employed by the Agency have emerged as some of the most extremist bashers of America in the ”antiwar movement”. One well-known example is Michael Scheuer, who anonymously penned Imperial Hubris, a book critical of the conduct of the war on terrorism since the mid-1990s. Scheuer had been assigned to create a “bin Laden desk” at the CIA. After resigning from the Agency, he went on a campaign against the US invasion of Iraq, warning that Moslems worldwide were growing to hate the US because of its “policies”, and in particular he blamed US support for Israel for anti-American terrorism. He considers bin Laden to be a “great man”.
Former CIA agent Melvin Goodman holds roughly similar political opinions, claims the CIA is being used to recruit public opinion and undermine domestic opposition to Bush’s policies, and is similarly politically active and tied to leftist groups. He denounces the CIA for its failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, although gives no evidence that he had himself predicted any such collapse before it occurred. Goodman also seems to endorse 9-11 conspiracy “theories”. Appearing at Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s hearings, which featured panelists who posited theories on 9/11 ranging from the Twin Towers coming down as a result of a “controlled demolition” to the Pentagon being blown up deliberately and not partially destroyed by a hijacked aircraft, Goodman was quoted as saying about McKinney, “I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom.”
Of those leftist ex-agents of the CIA who are publicly active in leftist policics, most are also openly anti-Semitic, with deep ties not only to radical leftist groups but also to neonazi and Holocaust Denial organizations and web sites; the most notable illustration is the husband-and-wife team of William and Kathleen Christison, to whom we will return shortly.
Radical leftist ex-CIA employees are not as rare as one might suppose. Several of them in fact have banded together to form the “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity”. This was founded by one Ray McGovern, who once worked in the CIA’s Russian desk before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and claims his group now contains 35 disgruntled ex-employees who left the Agency. William (“Bill”) Christison was a member of its “steering committee”, and his wife Kathleen a rank and file member. Another member, David MacMichael, has helped promote the urban myths about the CIA being involved in the drug trade. When Danny Casolaro, a Washington D.C. freelance investigator, was found dead in a hotel room, evidently having committed suicide, MacMichael helped fabricate a “theory” that the CIA or FBI had murdered him, a theory that has naturally been “adopted” by dozens of conspiracist web sites.
Whatever the true size of VIPS’ membership, the group has acted as little more than a far-left anti-American group, allied with some of the most extremist organizations in the “antiwar movement”, and having a special obsession with bashing Israel. Its members have appeared in several far-leftist video “documentaries”, including “Uncovered: the Whole Truth About the Iraq War” (Robert Greenwald) and “Break the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror” (John Pilger). In a rather typical statement in February 2003, the group blamed all of the problems in the Middle East on Israel.
VIPS’ Ray McGovern repeatedly blamed Israel for the 9-11 attacks, such as in a letter to the Christian Science Monitor just days after 9-11. In an interview in the left-wing Sojourners magazine, he claimed, “The war on Iraq was just as much prompted by the strategic objectives of the state of Israel as it was the strategic objectives of the United States.” He has repeated the claim that Israel is manipulating and controlling American foreign policy, and comes within inches of ranting about some grand Jewish cabal and conspiracy. He has accused Bush of being “out of his mind”. His articles appear on the pro-terror antiwar.com web site and in other similarly extremist web magazines. He claims to believe that the US was planning to “plant” weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the invasion, an assertion that long ago became part of the canon on conspiracist web magazines. His evidence was to claim that American intelligence had lied during World War II and in other arenas of operations. Today he is involved in some leftist church group and he is a booster for Cindy Sheehan.
“Bill” Christison’s bio claims that he joined the CIA in 1950 and served on the analysis side of the Agency for 28 years. He later served as National Intelligence Officer in several areas in the Third World and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis. His main take on the 9-11 attacks on America was that they were the comeuppance the US deserved for its unjust foreign policies and especially for its criminal support of Israel’s determination not to be annihilated. He opposes any American military action at all against Islamic terrorists, and instead suggests that they be dealt with by having their demands met.
The “Uruknet” web site of Iraqi Ba’athist pro-Saddam exiles has published at least five Christison articles. There is little about Saddam Hussein that Bill does not like and ditto for North Korea. He has written: “Largely because North Korea already has a few nuclear weapons, the U.S. has been deterred from the kind of aggressive action it has employed against non-nuclear Iraq, and has been forced to rely on diplomacy. And that's a good thing. (emphasis added)”...