Destroying the CIA and U.S. National Security: My Chat with Tim Weiner
A taste of the Q&As for everyone, on a vitally important subject
Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. Our next Q&A will take place on Friday, August 29, 1-2pmET. It will be “just us,” so plenty of time for your questions. After that, we’ll meet on Sunday, September 7, 8-9pmET (we meet Sunday evenings first week of the month). Our guest will be Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers and author of the book Why Fascists Fear Teachers, which will be published on September 16.
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As you know, these conversations are normally paywalled. But I felt that my exchange with Tim Wiener last Friday was too important not to share it with everyone. Tim is a Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning journalist writing about intelligence and national security. His new New York Times bestselling book is THE MISSION: The CIA in the 21st Century. He publishes the newsletter CODEWORD.
He talked in blunt terms about the damage being done by the Trump administration to the CIA. The entire apparatus of intelligence and national security is being dismantled, as part of Trump’s alliance with Putin and other autocrats, and he feels it will take a generation to rebuild.
This sober assessment is not out of line with the analyses I have been producing for you since February about the holistic plan of the Trump administration and the DOGE “government within a government” to wreck every agency and program that kept America safe from its enemies and also every area of private and public endeavor that brought America goodwill, prestige, and influence in the world.
If you are just joining Lucid, here are a few of those essays.
How Trump Partners with Putin
Wrecking America so Autocrats Can Prosper:
The Reckoning That Will Come from the Unprecedented Corruption
And here, for everyone, is the conversation with Tim, to read and share.
As always, stay safe and stay Lucid.
Ruth
Isn’t destroying our CIA and FBI and all Intelligence what putin wants. We have a Russian asset in the WH.
It seems to me that the 'usual' remedies to such deviant autocracy moves would be found in either the Congress or at the SCOTUS levels. And yet, all we hear is nada. So, if the current occupier of the WH is working against the Constitution, these others are doing so as well. Now begs the question: who can stop this? The usual agencies, leaders, judges seem all to willing to ignore these destructive measures fearing for their own re-election potential. 'Profiles in Fear' should be the next volume about all these fools. This leaves the organized electorate, the voters who can demonstrate loudly and proudly and frequently and fearlessly and then exercise their franchise in the coming elections. It's not money this time: it's the power of massive revulsion made public.