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The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have become bastions of political liberals and the pro-Democratic Party views of intelligence personnel have increased under President Donald Trump, according to a journal article by a former CIA analyst. John Gentry, who spent 12 years as a CIA analyst, criticized former senior intelligence leaders, including CIA Director John Brenan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former deputy CIA director Michael Morell, along with former analyst Paul Pillar, for breaking decades-long prohibitions of publicly airing their liberal political views in attacking Trump. The institutional bias outlined in a lengthy article in the...

The neocon Washington Post wants an even bigger U.S. military intervention in Syria, ignoring the tenets of international law and assuming that more bombing will somehow make things better, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. ___ Among the latest in the Washington Post editorial page’s unrelenting drumbeat of criticism on Syria — which often does not make clear exactly what the United States should be doing there, except that whatever it does should involve more military force than it is using now — is a signed column by deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl, who says President Obama ought to...

An event held last Fri­day at the National Press Club and broad­cast live on C-SPAN 3 focus­ing on the U.S.-Israel rela­tion­ship fea­tured a num­ber of vir­u­lently anti-Israel speak­ers who made con­spir­a­to­r­ial claims about Zion­ism, the influ­ence of the “Israel Lobby” and much more.jeff-blankfort-summit-dc-cspan The event, dubbed as a National Sum­mit to “Reassess the U.S.-Israel ‘Spe­cial Rela­tion­ship,’” was spon­sored by anti-Israel groups If Amer­i­cans Knew, the Coun­cil for the National Inter­est (CNI), the Insti­tute for Research: Mid­dle East­ern Pol­icy (IRmep) as well as the Wash­ing­ton Report on Mid­dle East Affairs. Ses­sions at the sum­mit included, “How does the Israel lobby influ­ence...

Last week, Newsweek’s Jeff Stein ran a sensationalist story detailing alleged Israeli spy activities in the United States. Stein, citing dubious sources, claimed that Israeli spies attempted to monitor Al Gore’s bathroom activities (an image too frightening to imagine) while drugs and women are routinely employed by Zionist spies to entice U.S. officials into handing over information of value. The sources for these and other absurd allegations contained in the article were mainly anonymous with one notable exception, an obscure ex-intelligence character and former CIA employee named Paul Pillar. One look at Pillar’s past articles, publications and speeches puts the...

Bush's War Monday, March 24 and Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9 P.M. (check local listings) From the horror of 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq; the truth about WMD to the rise of an insurgency; the scandal of Abu Ghraib to the strategy of the surge-for six years, FRONTLINE has revealed the defining stories of the war on terror in meticulous detail, and the political dramas that played out at the highest levels of power and influence. Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the full saga unfolds in the two-part FRONTLINE special Bush's War, airing Monday, March...

Outrage over the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes is but one element of the distress Republican intelligence watchdogs in Congress feel about the agency. "It is acting as though it is autonomous, not accountable to anyone," Rep. Peter Hoekstra, ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, told me. That is his mildest language about the CIA. In carefully selected adjectives, Hoekstra calls it "incompetent, arrogant and political." Chairman Silvestre Reyes and other Democrats on the intelligence committee join Hoekstra in demanding investigation into the tape destruction in the face of the administration's resistance, but the Republicans stand alone in protesting...

Who is Paul Pillar? By Michelle Malkin   ·   September 27, 2006 11:14 AM Drip, drip, drip? In its original report leaking details of the National Intelligence Estimate on the Iraq war, the New York Times relied on anonymous, unnamed leakers to spin its contents and embarrass the White House. Today, the Times includes comments from some named sources. Pay attention to this one: What was most remarkable about the intelligence estimate, several experts said, was the unremarkable nature of its conclusions. “At one level it is unsurprising stuff,’’ said Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the...

Author's note: Michelle Malkin pointed out the link to this post on Stop the New York Times.org on her blog todayThe declassified key finding of the NIE and the editors at the New York Times agree: we must stay in Iraq. "The current situation will get worse if American forces leave [Iraq]." – the editors of the NY Times, 9/27/06, in their editorial The Fine Art of Declassification "Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight." – Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence...

A former top CIA official said Thursday that despite the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is likely to be looking for weapons of mass destruction within the next five to 10 years. Paul Pillar, who until last year was in charge of intelligence assessments for the Middle East, said the CIA warned the Bush administration before the Iraq invasion in 2003 that a change of regimes would not necessarily solve any WMD problem. In a speech at the Middle East Institute here, Pillar said Iraqis live in "a dangerous neighborhood," with rival countries pursuing weapons of mass destruction. So the...

Today's (2/17) Wall Street Journal has an op-ed by a CIA intelligence officer, Guillermo Christensen, entitled Un-Intelligence. The article exposes the self-serving attack on President Bush and the War in Iraq by a fellow CIA officer named Paul Pillar in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. Pillar is now being lionized by the left for his anti-Bush screed - but you first learned about him here at To The Point in October 2004. Porter At The Pass revealed that Paul Pillar and his left wing cabal at the CIA, which I named The Pillar Gang, was conducting a covert campaign...

Bob Novak show us why the CIA (and the State Department by extrapolation) needs to be cleaned out. The CIA is full of Pacifist types who don't want to make the people who hate us hate us more. Is CIA at war with Bush? September 27, 2004 BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq as ''just guessing,'' the analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the...

We have talked repeatedly about the guerrilla war that the CIA, long a Democratic stronghold, has conducted for years against the Bush administration. Increasingly, that war is breaking out into the open, and we are sorry to see that our old friend (and Deacon's former roommate) Paul Pillar appears to be playing a key role. Robert Novak reports: A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq as ''just guessing,'' the analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in...

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did...

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new. by Stephen F. Hayes 02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq. Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its...

* Former CIA official accuses govt of ignoring warnings of post-invasion violence in Iraq WASHINGTON: A former CIA official who coordinated US intelligence on the Middle East has accused the Bush administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, The Washington Post reported Friday. The newspaper said Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, also accused the administration of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein....

When the president cannot trust his own CIA, the nation faces dire consequences. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak's revelations this week that CIA officer Paul R. Pillar is actively undermining President Bush fail to portray the depth of animosity between factions within the CIA and the White House. Mr. Pillar, who currently serves on the CIA's National Intelligence Council (NIC) as National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for the Near East and South Asia, is the lead author of the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's future recently leaked to the New York Times.