Time to Get Spies Out of Politics!

We start with a picture of Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, who starred in the hit TV show of the mid-sixties, I Spy. In this ground-breaking drama, Culp and Cosby, posing as a tennis pro and coach, went on secret missions, traveling around the world to save the United States from various nefarious actors and governments. Our title comes straight from a recent posting by independent journalist Matt Taibii on Substack. This title captures our thinking that, while US spies may be doing good and necessary work outside the United States, they are doing harm by increasingly involving themselves in domestic political activities. If left unchecked, we believe that this, indeed, poses a real threat and a danger to democracy.

Where to start? This past week, Newsweek Magazine, along with other media outlets, reported that former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell helped organize a letter by 50 intelligence community figures, ahead of the 2020 presidential election, suggesting that leaked emails from Hunter Biden's laptop were Russian disinformation.

In an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Morell stated in sworn testimony that he was called by Antony Blinken, then a high-ranking Biden campaign official, but now President Biden’s Secretary of State “on or before" October 17, 2020. This was three days after The NY Post published an email from the laptop suggesting Hunter had introduced his Ukrainian business partner to his father, then-Vice President Biden. (At that time, Morell was considered to be a potential CIA Director if Biden won the election). That same night, Blinken emailed Morell a USA Today article claiming that the FBI was examining whether Hunter’s laptop was part of a “disinformation campaign.” At the bottom of Blinken’s email was the signature block of Andrew Bates, then-director of rapid response for the Biden campaign.

Until Blinken’s call, Morell told House investigators, he had no intention of writing any statement exonerating Biden. However, he agreed that the conversation with Blinken “triggered … that intent” in him to organize a letter, which alleged that the New York Post story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Morell then reached out to retired CIA senior operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos for assistance in compiling the letter discrediting The Post’s reporting. Mr. Morrell’s effort was successful, for over the next two days he persuaded more than 50 former intelligence officials, including ex-CIA chiefs John Brennan, Leon Panetta and Mike Hayden, to sign an open letter suggesting "the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue."

The plot thickens! Mr. Morell has also testified that the Biden campaign “helped to strategize about the public release of the statement.” In an email he sent to Nick Shapiro, former deputy chief of staff to Brennan, he said that the Biden campaign wanted the statement to go to a particular reporter at the Washington Post. Morell did not recall why he told Shapiro the campaign wanted the statement to go to this reporter first and admitted that he may have spoken to the campaign on another occasion. In the end, Shapiro took the letter to Politico, which published it on Oct. 19 under the headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former officials say.

Three days later, then Presidential candidate Biden cited this letter in a debate with President Trump, saying that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” Biden then added that “nobody believes” that the laptop is real. The problem was and is that the laptop was real, the emails were real, and it was really, really true that the President’s son, Hunter, made millions of dollars in deals with China, Ukraine and Russia during the time his father, Joseph Biden, was vice-President.

What can we conclude by all of this? Our readers may notice that we highlighted the names of the very powerful and knowledgeable figures involved in this story. Given their position and influence in the intelligence community, they had to know that the FBI had taken possession of Hunter’s laptop ten months earlier in December 2019; so they should have known, when they signed that letter, that the laptop was genuine and not a part of any Russian disinformation plot. Therefore, we conclude either that these former spooks are very, very bad at their spygame craft, or we could conclude that they really did know that the laptop was real, and the purpose of the whole letter writing was, as admitted by Mr. Morell, “to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”

It should be noted here that Morrell also testified that, subsequent to the debate, Biden campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti called to "thank me for putting the statement out." That thank you call was organized by fellow signatory Jeremy Bash, who worked with Morrell at Beacon Global Strategies. Bash was Panetta‘s former chief of staff. You could say that Bash was rewarded or his part in the play, for he was later appointed by President Biden to a prestigious role on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. More importantly, it should be noted that the letter was highly effective, in that it achieved its purpose. The mainstream media swallowed the letter hook, line and sinker! Discussion of the laptop was blocked on social media, and virtually every major media outlet dismissed the story before the election, no doubt helping President Biden win a very close election.

The really important question, however, is: What did the President know, and when did he know it? It is hard for us to believe that in the ten months that the FBI possessed the laptop, Joe Biden never talked to his to his drug-addicted son and asked whether the laptop story was actually true. It is also very hard to believe that the Federal Bureau of INVESTIGATION did not investigate the laptop when it was in their possession, and that they did not, at the time, inform anyone, including Joe, of their findings. So you have to ask, did the President blatantly lie to the American people during the debate when he called the laptop story “garbage”?

We will probably never know the truth of President Biden’s statements, but we do agree with the statement from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: “It is apparent that the Biden campaign played an active role in the origins of the public statement, which had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election …“This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.”

Matt Taibii is absolutely correct. The CIA and the FBI need to stop interfering in our electoral process!