There is a battle currently going on over whether the CIA should be woke or not. The battle was apparently incited by a recent segment of a social media series issued by the CIA entitled “Humans of CIA.” According to an article in yesterday’s Washington Post, Susan Gordon, deputy director of national intelligence from 2017-2019, says that the aim of the series is to “connect to America, and if they’re lucky, attract new talent.”
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo went on the attack, exclaiming, “We can’t afford to risk our national security to appease some liberal, woke agenda.” Republican Senator Ted Cruz weighed in: “My point is that CIA agents should be bad-asses — not woke, fragile flowers.”
They upset Gordon, who responded in her article, “As a woman, I am plenty familiar with the false choice between diversity or excellence; the seemingly legitimate argument of “merit-based” selection that advances the notion that if organizations increase diversity and expand inclusion, they sacrifice mission or quality. Nothing could be further from my experience during my more than 30 years in the intelligence community, no matter how many times it is stated or implied. In reality, the smart move is to choose both. Inclusion and excellence. Diversity and mission.”
Which way should the CIA go? I’ve got an idea. How about simply abolishing the CIA? That would get rid of the jobs, which would solve the woke controversy.
That was obviously what President Kennedy wanted to do. He is reputed to have vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” That’s because the CIA defrauded the president into approving the disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The CIA told Kennedy that the plan would succeed without U.S. air support. It was a deliberate, knowing, intentional lie. They figured that once their invading force of Cuban exiles was getting shot up on the beach by Fidel Castro’s communist forces, Kennedy would have no choice but to save them from defeat by bombing Castro’s forces. To the CIA’s surprise and rage, Kennedy refused to provide the air support and instead let the Cuban exiles be killed or captured by the communists.
This evening in FFF’s conference “The National Security State and the Kennedy Assassination,” I will be delivering the concluding presentation of the conference. My talk is entitled “Regime Change: The JFK Assassination.” It will be the most complete single presentation I have ever made on the Kennedy assassination. It will be around 2 1/2 hours in length. I would like to invite you to attend. Please advise your friends. This evening, I am confident that everyone who attends will be easily able to understand why we continue to focus much of our attention here at FFF on this particular U.S. national-security regime-change operation. Just register at our conference website and a Zoom link will be emailed to you. If you don’t have Zoom on your computer, it’s very easy to download. The download link will be on the registration email that is sent to you. Registration is free.
As viewers will see in my presentation tonight, there is virtually no doubt that had Kennedy prevailed in his war against the U.S. national-security establishment, we would be living in an entirely different type of society today — a functional, peaceful, prosperous, and freer society, one that would be dramatically different from the one in which we are now living, which is characterized by forever wars, conflicts, tensions, coups, assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, secret surveillance, official enemies, out of control federal spending and debt, and, of course, an all-powerful Pentagon, CIA, and NSA.
In 1963, there was an enormous conflict of visions between Kennedy and the national-security establishment. Kennedy was determined to move America in a different direction — one away from the Cold War, one that would restore peaceful and friendly relations with Russia, Cuba, and the rest of the communist world. The Pentagon and the CIA were just as determined to continue moving America in the direction of a perpetual Cold War and also hot wars against communists in different parts of the world.
There was no way to reconcile those two visions. Once Kennedy threw the gauntlet down in his Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, the war was on. There was going to be a winner and a loser.
If Kennedy had won the war, there would have been no reason to continue the federal government as a national-security state. And there is a good possibility that the Pentagon and the CIA would not have had the opportunity to gin up a war on terrorism, like they did after the Cold War ostensibly ended in 1989.
That would have meant that Americans could have had their founding governmental system of a limited-government republic restored to them back in the 1960s, which would have meant no more Pentagon, vast military-industrial complex, CIA, NSA, forever wars, coups, assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, MKULTRA, secret surveillance, out of control federal spending and debt, and all of the other dark-side things that have come with a national-security state.
As I will detail in my talk this evening, unfortunately Kennedy was no match for the power of the national-security establishment. He ended up losing the war. But at least he provided a vision that can guide us out of the warfare-state morass that is taking our country down from within.
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The Future of Freedom Foundation was founded in 1989 by FFF president Jacob Hornberger with the aim of establishing an educational foundation that would advance an uncompromising case for libertarianism in the context of both foreign and domestic policy. The mission of The Future of Freedom Foundation is to advance freedom by providing an uncompromising moral and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government. Visit https://www.fff.org