Probably NEVER will….
Their political bosses may come and go and try to sing Trump’s tunes….
But deep down?
Donald Trump HAS continued to do things that caused concern among the professional’s in the ‘Agency’….
And they WILL be there long after Donald WILL NOT be President….
This piece is about Tom Sylvester ….
A veteran CIA boss that has gone public about his worries about President Trump and his efforts to cut the agency that has always not see things his way, and, actually been a arm of American President’s Foreign Policy , Public and Covertly….
If our nation’s spies are the infantry of our ideology, as John Le Carré once observed, Tom Sylvester is an unknown soldier who became a four-star general. Two years ago, he was named the CIA’s deputy director of operations, in charge of thousands of officers conducting espionage, covert action, and paramilitary operations. He won the job by virtue of his role in stealing Russia’s war plans for Ukraine, warning the world about the coming invasion, and providing steadfast support to Kyiv’s military and intelligence services. These missions were at the heart of a conversation we had last summer….
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I asked to meet him shortly after he appeared—as “Tom S.”—on a newly created in-house CIA podcast. I had been struck by what he’d said about the power of tyrants to shape the fate of nations: “I’ve had this catbird seat in watching, over the past decades, what has happened in world history. And what continues to horrify me, shock me, is the fact that single individuals have within their power the ability to wreak pain and suffering.”
Sylvester became the CIA’s acting director at the moment President Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, serving until Trump’s nominee, John Ratcliffe, a MAGA acolyte, was sworn in three days later. He remained the deputy director of operations until he stepped down in late May.
Looking back on our conversation, I wonder how Sylvester copes with the shattering of the nation’s alliances, what he makes of the amateurs and toadies now in charge of U.S. national security, and if he fears that the chances of a catastrophic intelligence failure are rising as fast as they did at the dawn of the 21st century. The CIA is an executor of U.S. foreign policy; its spies are exquisitely sensitive to orders from on high, and they conduct covert operations under the command of presidents and presidents alone. What do they do when the greatest threat to U.S. national security is the man in the White House?…
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“The world is getting increasingly complex and increasingly dangerous,” Sylvester said last year. “Across the globe our adversaries are doing everything they can” to instill authoritarian rule. Russia and China depended on “other countries that fear their dominion, fear their tyranny, and only cooperate from a sense of either intimidation, or that it’s business, or they’re bought off.” But he asserted confidently that the United States had allies around the world who “identify with us and what we want to do in this globe.” Who sides with it now as it lurches toward autocracy?
Over the course of eight decades, the CIA’s officers saw themselves as a secret army in the battle for what once was known as the free world. Now the country faces a threat from within. As the president assaults civil liberties and the Constitution, the instruments of U.S. national security are in the hands of his sycophants. The foundations of its foreign policy are crumbling. The ranks of the CIA’s most experienced spies and analysts are thinning. Its ties to foreign services are fraying. All this raises the danger of a disastrous intelligence failure. Imagine what could happen if the United States were struck again by a surprise attack in the coming days. What would stop Trump from declaring martial law, suspending elections, and truly ruling as a dictator?
Presidents before Trump have used the CIA to try to realize their imperial ambitions. And the nation’s spies do not have a history of defying presidents. But perhaps those with the greatest morality will resist him. And years could pass before their stories might be told….