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EXCERPT: How the Great Cultural Revolution Transformed the CIA and FBI
American Greatness ^ | 16 Jan, 2024 | J. Michael Waller

Posted on 01/16/2024 5:59:14 AM PST by MtnClimber

An early Soviet active measures campaign took on a life of its own and survived the collapse of the USSR. It provided the philosophical and strategic bases for a cultural Marxist revolution so profound that it penetrated the cores of the CIA and FBI.

That is one of the startling findings of scholar J. Michael Waller in his new book, Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains. Published today [January 16] by Regnery, Big Intel shows how the intelligence community failed to defend the United States against a decades-old Soviet covert operation to destroy democratic Western societies from within.

American Greatness is reprinting an exclusive excerpt of Big Intel to show how the Obama administration used the George W. Bush-era centralization of the intelligence community to impose critical theory and cultural Marxism on the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence services. The excerpt is slightly edited for context and clarity.

Excerpt from Big Intel: The Obama fundamental transformation

With a bipartisan and apparently balanced national security team named and confirmed by the Senate during a long post-inaugural political honeymoon in 2009, Obama aimed his first strike at the top of the centralized 17-agency intelligence community: Admiral Dennis Blair, the uncontroversial, nonpartisan Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Obama asked for his resignation in May, 2010.

Now came the revolution. As Robert Mueller had centralized the FBI, the new director of national intelligence post would centralize authority over all American intelligence agencies. Obama replaced Blair with one of the most radical, flawed intelligence figures since the Comintern infiltration of the World War II Office of Strategic Services.

James Clapper … made an ideal pick for President Obama in 2010 because he looked like a Republican but acted like a Marxist. Unanimously confirmed in the Senate as Director of National Intelligence, Clapper would remain in charge of the entire American intelligence community for the rest of the Obama presidency.

As DNI, Clapper found a devoted White House partner in John O. Brennan, the former CIA chief of staff and President Obama’s special assistant for homeland security. Brennan called Clapper “my foxhole buddy and good friend.” Before long, Obama would name Brennan CIA director.

Clapper provided the sheltering roof, what Russians would call the krysha, for the critical theorists in and around the administration to get to work…. Clapper’s cultural revolution of intelligence would be incremental, done small at first and escalated gradually, until finally becoming a fait accompli that all must accept if they wanted to continue to serve and keep their jobs.

The cultural revolution in the intelligence community, as with much of the rest of the government bureaucracy, began on August 18, 2011. On that day Obama issued Executive Order 13583. The title said it all: “Establishing a Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce.” The shepherdess of the executive order was presidential confidant Valerie Jarrett.

Diversity order 13583 was a social revolutionary ukase. It made no reference to enhancing intelligence collection, analysis, operations, or capabilities. It gave no explanation as to how such a diverse force might strengthen the intelligence community with language skills or knowledge of domestic or foreign cultures or the benefits of varied personal perspectives, experiences and backgrounds.

On its face, 13583 looked like a virtue-signaling sop to the various identity groups that funded or mobilized voters for Obama’s presidency. But there was nothing superficial about it. It was an ideological coup. The executive order was a majoritarian decree to transform the culture of the entire federal bureaucracy through implementation of critical theory. Once the bureaucratic culture changed—as Italian Communist Party theoretician Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School’s Herbert Marcuse had taught—the proper opinions and policies would follow. Obama knew that personnel is policy.

The Obama White House barely pretended to draw a correlation between increased diversity in the intelligence community and the upgrading of American intelligence capabilities. It issued no guidance on the actual skill sets that a more diverse workforce would require. The criteria kept shifting. First it was diversity and inclusion, later “equity” would be inserted between the two. Persons with disabilities, known as PWDs, became “persons with targeted disabilities,” or PWTDs, “targeted” meaning more severe – to include advancement for people with psychological disorders and mental illness.

Agency meetings advertised as inviting open exchanges of ideas fizzled into presentations that mandated policies and stifled discussion and constructive feedback. All personnel were invited to voice concerns, but it was clear that any intelligence professional who did so risked paying a price. One might mark oneself for professional oblivion by dissenting at all.

Target: Critical race theory at CIA

In its 2009 report on intelligence reform, released under Director Leon Panetta’s name, the CIA made no mention of diversity, equity, inclusion, gender, sex, LGBT, or anything similar. That would change. The CIA director seemed powerless to moderate the radicalism of what would follow.

Panetta wrote in his memoir that the Obama White House staff displayed what he diplomatically called a “penchant for control” over the CIA and the intelligence community at large. He named no names. The White House seemed more obsessed with taking over the levers of power through its cultural Marxist revolution than it did with terminating bin Laden.

Georgetown University Professor John Gentry, a former CIA analyst, penned several studies in a professional journal about the forces Obama was unleashing. Panetta, he recounted, “wrote a letter that Obama’s White House staff tightly controlled the policies and activities of agency heads, including himself as DCIA [Director of the Central Intelligence Agency], making it clear that Obama was behind the IC’s diversity initiatives. By the end of the Obama administration, such efforts had appreciably altered the demography of the IC.”

The intelligence community and military’s extraordinary work in destroying al Qaeda and killing bin Laden in May, 2011, called for a victory lap and changed everyone’s focus. The next month, with his mission complete, Defense Secretary Gates resigned. Panetta left the CIA to replace Gates at the Pentagon. Obama named former Army General David Petraeus as the next CIA chief. Petraeus lasted only 14 months and resigned in a scandal late in 2012. Obama waited until his second term, in March, 2013, to appoint his aide John O. Brennan as CIA Director.

The team was being pieced into place to execute fundamental transformation.

He may have been career CIA man with the nonpartisan credentials of serving at the top of the CIA under presidents Clinton and Bush, but Brennan had a radical past. He shared Obama’s views that the administration transform the country through incrementalism. He also had a political background not unlike those of Attorney General Eric Holder and especially Jarrett. When Brennan first enlisted during the Carter administration, the CIA somehow cleared him despite his recent vote for a controlled Soviet asset, Communist Party chief Gus Hall, as President of the United States. In his memoir, Brennan drew no lessons from the experience, dismissing it as a “lark.”

After a shipboard United States Navy Islamic ceremony carefully prepared, prayed over, and buried bin Laden’s body into the Indian Ocean, Director Brennan executed Obama diversity order 13583 with gusto. He mandated diversity offices be set up within CIA components. He increased hiring and promotions consistent with Obama’s critical theory criteria. And he instituted explicit preferential promotion by sex (not gender) in response to a study on the status of women at the CIA, regardless of the best qualified for a particular job.

Managers on the CIA Directorate of Support punished their subordinates who failed to comply with the new politicized atmosphere. Even female employees felt threatened. Retired CIA analyst Nicholas Dujmovic said that some in the analysis directorate called Brennan’s politicization “soft totalitarianism.”

Nowhere in his 400-page memoir did Brennan ever claim that the goal was to make intelligence more efficient or its deliverables more productive. According to Gentry, excellence was never the plan. “Brennan did not argue that Obama wanted to improve the performance of government in general, let alone the IC,” Gentry wrote.

Yet Brennan began a constant refrain, a lie, that the cultural revolution in the CIA would make America’s intelligence machinery stronger. He just never explained how.

END

J. Michael Waller is Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy.

Follow @JMichaelWaller on Twitter/X.


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: 13583; cap; ciatimeline; criticalracetheory; davidpetraeus; dni; ericholder; evilobama; fbiakastasi; jamesclapper; jmichaelwaller; johnbrennan; johngentry; johnobrennan; leftism; leonpanetta; obama; robertgates; robertmueller; thecommunist; valeriejarrett; waller
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1 posted on 01/16/2024 5:59:14 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

And today the CIA and FBI seem to be corrupt beyond comprehension.


2 posted on 01/16/2024 5:59:25 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: MtnClimber

Obama was the trojan horse for folks like Bill Ayres.

And what does Bill Ayres have planned for us?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKTltWU1e7w


3 posted on 01/16/2024 6:01:35 AM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: MtnClimber

I’m torn between did the Commies of the 1940’s and 1950’s start these liberal movements to destroy the country or did the Commies of the 1960’s steal these liberal movements to destroy the country. Guess it doesn’t matter at this point…..


4 posted on 01/16/2024 6:03:35 AM PST by Lockbox (politicians, they all seemed like game show hosts to me.... Sting…)
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To: MtnClimber

I’m currently reading “The Man Who Knew Too Much” by Dick Russell. I highly recommend it.

Afterwards I hope to read “A Terrible Mistake.”

This corruption goes back decades at least to the early ‘50s.


5 posted on 01/16/2024 6:09:57 AM PST by texanyankee
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To: MtnClimber

I’m currently reading “The Man Who Knew Too Much” by Dick Russell. I highly recommend it.

Afterwards I hope to read “A Terrible Mistake.”

This corruption goes back decades at least to the early ‘50s.


6 posted on 01/16/2024 6:09:58 AM PST by texanyankee
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To: MtnClimber

BTTT


7 posted on 01/16/2024 6:18:29 AM PST by nopardons (12 hours prior to the test. SIGH)
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To: MtnClimber

Joe Biden Tells Democrats to Treat Future White Minority ‘with Respect
Breitbart ^ | 10/02/2023 | NEIL MUNRO
https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2023/10/02/joe-biden-tells-democrats-treat-future-white-minority-respect/
Biden:
“We’re going to be — very shortly — a minority-white European country, and sometimes my [Democrat] colleagues don’t speak enough to make it clear that that is not going to change how we operate,”


8 posted on 01/16/2024 6:28:32 AM PST by Haddit
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To: MtnClimber

And our evil GOPe, worthless, do-nothings but increase national debt to the point of collapse will make sure the FIB gets a new bigger building then the Pentagon. You would think that the FIB agency would be screaming bloody murder about 12,000 illegals a day, yet nothing but silence tells you everything.


9 posted on 01/16/2024 6:44:35 AM PST by quantim (Victory is not relative, it is absolute. )
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To: MtnClimber

Bonzo’s “17 intelligence communities” who cried (according to the liberal “media”) the night that Trump won in 2016, have all now been weaponized to ensure Americans march in lockstep with the Communist Party, and are now the greatest danger to the America Republic.


10 posted on 01/16/2024 6:46:45 AM PST by FlingWingFlyer (Remember what happened last time we brought in forced labor. Support Abbott's Underground RR.)
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To: Lockbox
I’m torn between did the Commies of the 1940’s and 1950’s start these liberal movements to destroy the country or did the Commies of the 1960’s steal these liberal movements to destroy the country.

They are the same. The Frankfurt school exported the first generation of intellectuals to the US in the 1940s, and their heirs started infiltrating our institutions starting in the 1960s.

11 posted on 01/16/2024 6:55:04 AM PST by nwrep
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To: MtnClimber
And today the CIA and FBI seem to be corrupt beyond comprehension.

Handiwork of Obamas henchmen Clapper and Brennan, all three diabolical creatures IMHO....

12 posted on 01/16/2024 7:40:42 AM PST by eeriegeno (Checks and balances??? What checks and balances?)
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To: MtnClimber

later


13 posted on 01/16/2024 8:13:23 AM PST by Chuckster (Friends don't let friends eat FARMED FISH.)
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To: MtnClimber
It might be the other way around - that it’s Intel who determines the evolution of culture.

Some believe that the worldwide Intelligence superstructure which exists today has its roots in ancient civilizations. Secrecy, deception and bloodlust for power have existed for as long as human civilization has existed. The idea of an organized, overarching structure managing human affairs on behalf of an elite ruling group - has become more compelling.

14 posted on 01/16/2024 8:23:31 AM PST by yelostar (Spook codes 33 and 13. See them often in headlines and news stories. )
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To: nwrep

1st wave, 2nd wave, then more larger waves……… guess that’s how we get here.


15 posted on 01/16/2024 8:28:16 AM PST by Lockbox (politicians, they all seemed like game show hosts to me.... Sting…)
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To: MtnClimber

devoted White House partner in John O. Brennan,

\%
. who is a convert to jihadi islam.

spit.


16 posted on 01/16/2024 8:38:21 AM PST by cuz1961 (USCGR Vet, John Adams Descendant , deal with it.)
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To: MtnClimber

And once again the intelligence and foresight of our founding fathers is proven. They required only natural born citizens of the United States be eligible for president to prevent loyalties to other countries and ideologies. Obama was not a natural born citizen despite all the leftist BS claiming the contrary.


17 posted on 01/16/2024 12:11:19 PM PST by falcon99 ( )
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To: MtnClimber; MadMax, the Grinning Reaper; piasa

This is good as far as it goes, but the intelligence community started caving in to political correctness in the mid-1970s at CIA and the late 80s at the FBI, when filling quotas began to take precedence over performance-based promotions. Obama accelerated an existing trend.


18 posted on 01/16/2024 5:03:29 PM PST by Fedora
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To: Fedora

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-10-27-9204070439-story.html

FBI DIRECTOR`S MISTAKES SLOWLY COME TO LIGHT
By Terry Atlas and Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune • Published: Oct 27, 1992

“The FBI chief has said little publicly, but Alice Sessions told a Texas newspaper that the director is the victimof a smear campaign being waged by his enemies within the FBI and Justice Department.

Sessions has ‘upset some of the old boys at the FBI’ with his efforts to promote women and minority agents,said Rep. Don Edwards (D-Calif.), who was an FBI agent in the 1940s. . .”


19 posted on 01/16/2024 5:10:02 PM PST by Fedora
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To: MtnClimber

Trust Mike. He’s very smart, brave (went to see the Freedom-fighters inside marxist Nicaragua), and educated in Intelligence, the KGB and intelligence matters.

Disclosure: I worked with him on several projects including outting Rep. George Crockett Jr. (D-Mich) as a Red which the Washington Post pooh-pooched in an attempt to deflect from his decades long CPUSA affiliations.


20 posted on 01/19/2024 5:16:30 PM PST by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper (Figures a)
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