The CIA and FBI Were Never “Heroes”

By  Kenny Cordasco

Confronted with an incoherent assertion, an exasperated Bertrand Russell once sighed, “Statements of this kind, I must confess, leave me gasping, and I hardly know where to begin.”[1] I found myself repeatedly having the same thought while making my way through a delusional new book about the intelligence community.

Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains is a schizophrenic attempt to merge reactionary Cold War anti-communism with contemporary right-wing scaremongering over diversity in order to explain what has “gone wrong” with the FBI and CIA. The author, J. Michael Waller, appears to be a 21st century reincarnation of Dr. Strangelove’s General Jack D. Ripper, with a worldview indistinguishable from the ravings of a madman.

While difficult to summarize owing to its kaleidoscopic nature, Big Intel’s central premise goes something like this: Shortly after the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks initiated an “active measures” campaign to subvert American political, cultural and educational institutions from within. As part of their plot, they created the Frankfurt School, whose adherents launched a campaign of “cultural Marxism” that penetrated American institutions and devoured them from the inside over the next hundred years. This scheme was so successful that it outlived the Soviet Union, continuing on autopilot after the Cold War and engulfing the formerly “heroic” CIA and FBI, converting them into bastions of the totalitarian ideology of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Despite the sheer insanity of all this, Big Intel is more than a mere freakish curiosity. It is a reminder that the ghosts of frothing-at-the-mouth, John Birch-style, McCarthyite anti-communism continue to influence American politics. This is crucial to appreciate, since the United States has decisively embarked on a reckless new Cold War against Russia and China, drastically increasing the possibility of nuclear holocaust. If we are ever to see the return of a vigorous anti-imperialist movement capable of reining in the national security state, socially conscious people will need to pay close attention to the thinking of its members. J. Michael Waller—who has long been nestled within the most reactionary corners of the intelligence community—has written a book that reveals how especially unhinged security state insiders understand the world. We would be remiss not to take a look.

Who Is J. Michael Waller?

Before saying anything further about his extravagant theorizing, it is worth discussing who J. Michael Waller actually is. While hardly a household name, he has long been a dedicated servant of the national security state. As early as the 1980s, he developed an “interest in fighting Communism and supporting President Ronald Reagan’s strategy to push Soviet-backed revolutionaries out of Central America.” Back then he was “national secretary of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), Reagan’s favorite youth organization,” as well as “a coordinator at the College Republican National Committee on Capitol Hill to promote the president’s takedown of the Soviet bloc.”[2]

Waller claims that he never applied to the CIA, but Big Intel’s cover refers to him as a “former operative for the CIA,” and in the text he claims to have “served as an asset for CIA Director Bill Casey in Central America,” albeit as a “total amateur.”[3]

His own website proudly boasts that he “received his military training as an insurgent with the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (contras).” According to Big Intel, he first attempted “to sneak into Nicaragua on [his] own with the anti-Sandinista forces of former Sandinista guerrilla leader Eden Pastora.”[4] He claims to have been personally recruited by then-CIA Director William Casey in a Catholic Church during mass shortly thereafter.[5]

The Contras were known to have adopted a “premeditated policy to terrorize civilian noncombatants,” with “[h]undreds of civilian murders, mutilations, tortures and rapes…committed in pursuit of this policy, of which the…C.I.A. superiors were well aware.” Recently, Waller boasted to the One America News (OAN) Network about his involvement with the notorious terrorists—whom he characterized as “these really wonderful people in this peasant army.”

Waller’s exact role in Nicaragua is not entirely clear. But clues can be gleaned from his website, where he refers to himself as “a scholar-practitioner in strategic communication and unconventional conflict” and a “[s]pecialist in propaganda, political warfare, psychological strategy, subversion, [and] strategic communication.” He also boasts of his “[h]ands-on work with insurgencies and counterinsurgency efforts” as well as “[i]nvolvement at all levels with planning and execution of political and psychological warfare campaigns.” Presumably this refers to his time with the Contras; another site that appears to be Waller’s boasts that he received “contracts with the U.S. government in Honduras” to train “commanders and sub-commanders of the Nicaraguan Resistance Army in political warfare and political communication.”

Waller’s academic career has also been defined by his national security state ties. In Big Intel he claims to have “spent two years studying how to recognize and combat Soviet disinformation” via a research methodology he characterizes as “most irregular.”[6] He never elaborates on the nature of this methodology, but judging by the bizarre claims made in Big Intel, “most irregular” is an understatement.

full story at https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/07/15/the-cia-and-fbi-were-never-heroes/

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