TRUMP'S WAR WITH THE CIA OVER RUSSIA, Jiri and Leni Friedman Valenta

          Unafraid, Bi-partisan, Uphold U.S. and Freedom

Today is Donald’s inauguration as President of the United States. Sadly, some in the CIA are conflating Trump’s dispute with them over whether Russia hacked the DNC with a charge that Trump is, in the words of former acting Director of the CIA Mike Morell, “an unwitting stooge of Russia.”

The CIA is likely right about the Russian hacking. With his landslide, electoral college victory, Trump should accept it and move on. But the fact that Trump has had business connections with Russia in the past does not equate to proof of Donald’s being in Putin’s pocket, and the words “unwitting stooge” imply speculation rather than fact.

Most importantly, when some like Mike Morell speak out on behalf of the whole CIA or the “intelligence community,” they are misleading the American people. There are plenty of CIA officials as well as military brass who support Trump and unlike the outgoing appeaser-in-chief, want him to build up our depleted military and not let the worst terrorists out of Git-mo so that they can go back to killing us.

Our National Interest article, “Who is Mike Morell,” was also posted on Linkedin. Reading it, our possibly assigned critic, Giles de Mourot, (usually the first reader of any article we write) concluded “Morell is the pretext: the target is the US intelligence community as we know it.”

As who knows it? Under no circumstances will we let the Hillary-ites define us as attacking the CIA. We have the greatest respect for the CIA or intelligence community. But we don’t respect those misguided, disgruntled officials who are leading a CIA campaign against our new president.   

It goes further. After we were critical of Morell for wanting to “keep us safe” with a plan to “kill Russians” in Syria, we received some interesting comments posted at Linkedin. It seems that, to some of what could well be CIA, if you defend Trump as the better choice over Hillary, you too can be investigated as an agent of Russia.

Let them investigate me. For a decade, I taught Soviet and East European Studies to military intelligence officers of three armed services at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, and I am very proud of it! Deputy DCI Ray Cline came to visit my course on CIA 101.

Then the late DNI, Lt. General USA, William Odom, who used to send his officers to my courses, wrote, “President Reagan's strategy of military competition, economic denial, regional competition, and ideological struggle…did not enjoy popularity among many Sovietologists, though, to be sure, there were notable exceptions (p. 9), such as Richard Pipes, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Thomas Hammond, and Jiri Valenta… Yet the results of the Reagan approach have been precisely the opposite of what the majority of Sovietologists expected.”

I was involved regularly with academics, but also State Department, U.S. military and CIA experts at scholarly conferences and seminars under Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush ‘41 administrations.

I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, was a member of the class of ‘68, and watched some of my friends get killed during the Soviet invasion. It shaped my life. Much later, I engaged in disciplinary studies and reports for the U.S. government, analyzing the Russian brutal war in Afghanistan (1979-89) and Russian, Cuban and Vietnamese support for Leninist regimes in Grenada, Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia and Cambodia. Mr. Mourot from Switzerland doesn’t need to teach me about the Russian threat.

In the past, I consulted with four former DCI’s and had a close working relationship with leading academics who worked in CIA research divisions. Incidentally, this is where one of the best CIA Directors ever, Robert Gates, began his career.  

Thankfully, the intelligence community has not only skillful, ambitious bureaucrats like Morell, but outspoken and daring officials like counter-terrorism expert Cofer Black. Cofer surely risked his career on July 10^th, 2001, exhorting Condi Rice to put the country “on a war footing” against an al Qaida attack. Sadly, she didn’t so risk hers. He was also a powerful voice in the 2001, CIA -run war against al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan --. fought with the help of interesting bedfellows -- Putin’s Russians.

I say “CIA- run” since DCI George Tenet, with Cofer’s help, did an outstanding job of overseeing the operation with some special forces.

The problem is the unfortunate politicization of the CIA and the resulting, new and unusual obsession of some with Trump and the Russian threat. Why be upset that Trump and Putin are making noises about possible limited partnership against Islamists terrorists? It surely beats wanting to keep us safe” by “killing Russians” in Syria as proposed by Morell and endorsed by Hillary.

True, we don’t know exactly what Trump is liable to do. Likely he doesn’t either since he’s still learning on the job. He must surely dump part of the GOP platform and insist on providing defensive weapons to a neutral and free Ukraine. Time will show if he will or if his deal-making wins Putin’s agreement.

But Trump is a true patriot, is tough, has good instincts, and is moving in the right direction. What Morell proposed was foolhardy and extremely dangerous -- particularly facing our crushing national debt and continued involvement in two other wars.

The relationship between Trump and the intelligence community will surely improve under formidable new director, Mike Pompeo if, as he has testified, he pursues independent thinking rather than toadying to presidential politics.  

As Trump takes his oath today not to aid and abet domestic and foreign enemies, our outgoing president has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning and pardoned unrepentant terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera -- but forgot to pardon to deposed CIA Director General David Petraeus, our national hero.  

For a more comprehensive bio of Dr. Jiri Valenta and Leni Friedman Valenta, see jvlv.net and click on "Our Bios." Leni, the CEO of the Institute of Post-Communist Studies and Terrorism, is also the editor of jvlv.net.  Some of our JVLV articles also appear on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR's) Member Wall in NYC.