Would someone please tell me when I can trust American intelligence agencies? I need guidelines. A few helpful hints.
Donald Trump has made it clear that we cannot trust the FBI if it is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, he asked the U.S. attorney to investigate the FBI’s investigation into the election.
The CIA appears to be equally untrustworthy. It determined the Russians interfered in the 2016 presidential election to create chaos and help defeat Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton.
After meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the president proclaimed that while the FBI and CIA may claim there was a Russian plot to impact the U.S. election in 2016, Trump believes Putin when he says the Russians never did any such thing.
Trump has indicated he believes the FBI hates him.
National Security Agency (NSA) officials claim that financial aid to Ukraine was withheld in part because Trump now believes Ukraine hosted the computer servers used to interfere in the election. Russia has told the president this is true.
The NSA, FBI and CIA have told him something else.
Trump does not believe them.
All of this cynicism about U.S. intelligence agencies predates Trump, of course.
Back in the 1960s the FBI spied on groups that opposed the Vietnam War, wiretapped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because of his civil rights activism and compiled dossiers on elected officials for political blackmail.
Democrats didn’t trust the intelligence agencies back then. The CIA was known to overthrow legitimately elected foreign governments it didn’t like. Yes, it interfered in elections.
Yet, throughout the years until today, if an intelligence agency reports some foreign power, some terrorist group, is plotting an attack on the U.S., we always seem ready to go to war.
Or at least bomb the crap out of some country.
Maybe assassinate a general.
According to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, our country had “intelligence” that there was an “imminent” threat to attack our troops, our government officials overseas, something somewhere that cannot be disclosed. So, we used a drone to kill an Iranian general who was an evil, terrible, really bad guy.
How did we know the intelligence this time was good?
How do we know that it wasn’t created by some “never Trumper” working in military intelligence who just wanted to make the president look bad?
Do we know anything about these intelligence people and their sources? Have they been investigated by the U.S. attorney? Has Rudy Giuliani been in the Middle East to get to the truth of the situation in Iran?
Trust. It’s so hard to come by these days. Except when somebody, a person we may never know, says it’s time to kill people in a foreign country. Bam! It’s like a computer game. A drone takes off and someone dies.
Hey, I have nothing against killing people. I’m an American. We’ve been killing people since the day our country was founded. We’ve killed them all over the world in the name of freedom. As President Trump likes to tell everyone, we’re better at it than anyone in the world.
Being the toughest guy on the block feels good.
And punching a bully in the nose seems like the right thing to do, even if that means blowing his head off.
But how do we know about this intelligence thing? Really, when are they lying to us and when are they telling the truth? And will we ever know who “they” are?
Ironically, you don’t have to have any intelligence to believe the intelligence you have.
Send letters to letters@suntimes.com
