{"id":31860,"date":"2026-07-08T10:31:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T10:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=31860"},"modified":"2026-07-08T10:31:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T10:31:18","slug":"why-would-anyone-trust-ex-cia-agents-in-elected-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=31860","title":{"rendered":"Why Would Anyone Trust Ex-CIA Agents in Elected Office?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n \"Government
\n The CIA headquarters in McLean, Va., on March 3, 2005.<\/span> Photo: Brooks Kraft LLC\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Democratic Party<\/span> is rife with internal caucuses and factions. There\u2019s the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Blue Dog Coalition, the \u201cSquad,\u201d and so on. But since 2019, when Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger first took seats in the House of Representatives, the party has had another, more sinister emerging faction: the CIA Spook Caucus. <\/p>\n

In the last seven years, the Spook Caucus has only gained in strength. Both of its core members have graduated from the House to higher office, with Slotkin elected to the Senate<\/a> in 2024 and Spanberger elected the governor of Virginia<\/a> the following year. Soon afterward, Spanberger was selected by the Democratic leadership to deliver the rebuttal<\/a> to Donald Trump\u2019s 2026 State of the Union Address, which elevated her to the national stage. Slotkin, meanwhile, has floated the idea<\/a> of a 2028 presidential run. <\/p>\n

And in the 2026 midterms<\/a>, the Spook Caucus might expand further: In the Democratic primary for Virginia\u2019s 8th Congressional District, former CIA officer Adam Dunigan<\/a> is running for the opportunity to challenge GOP nominee<\/a> Anthony Sabio, who is also<\/em> ex-CIA. But if you happen to care about concepts like \u201chuman rights\u201d or \u201cdemocracy,\u201d this influx of intelligence operatives into our elections is extremely bad news. <\/p>\n

Spanberger\u2019s honeymoon period with the Virginia Democrats is already over. Less than a year into her tenure as governor, she has vetoed<\/a> 31 of the General Assembly\u2019s bills, including \u201chigh-profile Democratic priorities<\/a>\u201d like collective bargaining rights<\/a> for public workers and protections against ICE agents making warrantless arrests inside courthouses<\/a>. On the labor bill, local unions say<\/a> Spanberger betrayed a campaign promise<\/a> she\u2019d made to them. After vetoing two bills to limit ICE arrests, the ACLU of Virginia said<\/a> her actions \u201cconstitute a voluntary surrender\u201d to the Trump administration\u2019s immigration agenda.<\/p>\n

\n \"Union
\n Union and non-union workers across several industries protest Gov. Abigail Spanberger\u2019s recent veto of a collective bargaining bill in Richmond, Va., on May 21, 2026.<\/span> Photo: Allyse Pulliam\/Times-Dispatch via Getty Images<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But this about-face shouldn\u2019t be surprising, because the public doesn\u2019t really know who Abigail Spanberger is or what she believes, deep down. That\u2019s the problem with electing a CIA officer: They\u2019re professionally trained liars. In a 2025 interview<\/a> with the Washington Post, Spanberger said she used to have five different passports and identities: \u201cI would travel in \u2018true name,\u2019 but then I would meet people not in \u2018true name.\u2019\u201d The profile explicitly calls this spycraft \u201cinterpersonal skills transferable to politics.\u201d In other words, this is someone who was accustomed to saying whatever people want to hear while concealing her true intentions. So whenever she speaks to Virginia voters, they have no way of telling whether she\u2019s \u201cin true name\u201d or not. The unions found that out the hard way.<\/p>\n

As usual, then, we have to judge by actions over words. With this spring\u2019s veto spree, Spanberger\u2019s actions are wildly out of step with the wishes of the voters who elected her, who overwhelmingly support unions<\/a> and are growing more distrustful of Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a>. (Seeing your fellow<\/a> Americans shot dead in the street<\/a> will do that.) But the vetoes are perfectly in tune with the interests of the national security state, from the drug enforcement agents who still want to make weed busts to ICE itself. Those are Spanberger\u2019s colleagues, and the former CIA agent has moved to protect their power to surveil and police the people she supposedly represents.<\/p>\n

Instead, she\u2019s reserved her harshest attacks for socialists. In 2020, after Joe Biden squeaked his way into the presidency, Spanberger told party leaders<\/a>, \u201cWe need to not ever use the word \u2018socialist\u2019 or \u2018socialism\u2019 ever again,\u201d a clear shot at rising left-wing leaders like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It was an intervention in the ongoing conflict<\/a> over the future of the Democratic Party<\/a>, intended to prevent it from ever becoming a truly progressive one \u2014 as the Bezos-owned Washington Post also noted<\/a> with approval.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hostility to socialists is baked into<\/a> the institutional culture of the CIA. It\u2019s practically the agency\u2019s reason for existing, and over the course of the 20th century, the CIA and its handpicked dictators massacred countless socialists around the world, from overthrowing<\/a> President Salvador Allende in Chile, to sponsoring terrorist attacks against Cuba<\/a>, to the mass slaughter<\/a> of Indonesian communists via the \u201cJakarta Method<\/a>.\u201d Today, though, Spanberger\u2019s anti-socialist stance is directly at odds with the will of Democratic voters, who now approve of socialism<\/a> at a higher rate (66 percent) than capitalism (42 percent).<\/p>\n

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What about Slotkin,<\/span> who now says she won’t rule out a run for president? Like Spanberger, her track record with the CIA is a black box. On her official biography<\/a> webpages, we\u2019re told only that she chose to join the agency shortly after 9\/11, and served \u201cthree tours in Iraq alongside the U.S. military\u201d as a \u201cMiddle East analyst.\u201d In a 2020 interview<\/a> with the New Yorker\u2019s Isaac Chotiner, she volunteered that she was specifically an \u201cIraqi Shia-militia expert.\u201d After that, it was on to a role as a national security adviser for both the late Bush and early Obama administrations, a few years as an acting assistant secretary of defense, and then the House and Senate.<\/p>\n

\n \"WASHINGTON,
\n Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., speaks at a press conference on the introduction of the Drain the Slush Fund Act in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 2026.<\/span> Photo: Nathan Posner\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This raises some nasty questions. Exactly what <\/em>information was Slotkin \u201canalyzing\u201d in Iraq, and how was it obtained? We know that one of the primary ways the CIA gathered \u201cintelligence\u201d about \u201cIraqi Shia militias\u201d was by grabbing and torturing people<\/a> it suspected of being militants at black site prisons like Abu Ghraib<\/a>. We know, too, that only a small fraction of those people actually had anything to do with terrorism. So it\u2019s plausible that at least some of Slotkin\u2019s \u201canalysis\u201d was based on the supposed \u201cintelligence\u201d gleaned when you subject a random Iraqi farmer to waterboarding<\/a>, stress positions<\/a>, or \u201crectal rehydration<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worse, Slotkin graduated to an adviser<\/em> to the Bush\/Cheney administration in its last days. In that role, she might have known about some of the CIA\u2019s abuses before the infamous \u201ctorture memos<\/a>\u201d came out in 2009. She might have had the opportunity to blow the whistle. It feels highly unlikely that we\u2019ll ever know for sure.<\/p>\n

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The CIA and the broader \u201cintelligence community\u201d needs global conflict, in the same way that cops need crime, priests need sin, and the Orkin man needs termites.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Slotkin\u2019s more recent statements about the Middle East don\u2019t exactly inspire confidence, either. Like many liberals, she\u2019s willing to criticize the GOP\u2019s war-mongering, but only on tactical grounds, not basic moral principle. For instance, she has said the Bush administration<\/a> \u201ccompletely misread how difficult it would be to try and be the government for another country.\u201d Similarly, she told Chotiner that Trump\u2019s 2020 assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani might be unwise and provoke a \u201cstrong reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Related <\/h2>\n

Why Dems Keep Saying Trump Has \u201cNo Plan\u201d Instead of Calling to End the War With Iran<\/h3>\n

<\/span>
\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n

What she doesn\u2019t say is that invading other people\u2019s countries and killing their leaders, and then trying to \u201cbe the government,\u201d is inherently illegitimate and criminal<\/a>. But she can\u2019t, not really, because having worked for the CIA, she\u2019d be condemning her co-workers \u2014 and her own record of service. <\/p>\n

We can see the same pattern play out with more recent cases of U.S. aggression. When the Trump administration attacked Iran and Venezuela earlier this year, Slotkin moved in lockstep with the majority of the Democratic Party, voting for war powers resolutions<\/a> against hostilities with both countries<\/a>. (This, to her credit, makes her more reliable than John Fetterman, who has voted to preserve<\/a> Trump\u2019s power to attack Iran on multiple occasions<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

But her public statements tell another story. When the Trump administration made a request for $50 billion in additional funding for the Iran war, Slotkin was open to the idea, telling<\/a> Politico reporters only that \u201cI need to know the goals and the plan. … I don\u2019t rule anything out.\u201d And when Trump deposed and kidnapped<\/a> Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, she criticized him<\/a> for working with Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s \u201cillegitimate government\u201d rather than following through on his promise to\u00a0\u201c[get] rid of that administration\u201d entirely. Again, there\u2019s no indication that waging regime-change wars is wrong in itself; only that Trump had bungled the job by not going far enough.<\/p>\n

China, though, is Slotkin\u2019s biggest b\u00eate noire. Like a lot of centrists who have taken the wrong lessons<\/a> from the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Slotkin has taken to making short-form video content. She calls these videos her weekly \u201cIntel Briefings<\/a>,\u201d and they\u2019re skin-crawling to watch, like something you\u2019d see on a TV in the background of a Paul Verhoeven movie.<\/p>\n

Beating the drum for conflict with China is a constant theme. In one representative \u201cbriefing<\/a>,\u201d Slotkin tells viewers about \u201can issue that a lot of Michiganders know about: China and the threats that they pose.\u201d (The \u201cthreat\u201d turns out to be that China may buy computer chips from Nvidia, which is apparently \u201cthe equivalent of President Truman giving Russia some of our best nuclear blueprints.\u201d) In another video, she condemns<\/a> Trump for putting out a national security strategy that fails to \u201cgo hard against China.\u201d <\/p>\n

It’s all like this. We\u2019re told that China has a worrying \u201cchokehold\u201d on the supply of \u201ccritical minerals\u201d<\/a> like lithium and cobalt; China \u201coften undercuts our ability to sell our products<\/a>,\u201d so we need to \u201cclamp down on what the Chinese are doing in international trade<\/a>\u201d; Chinese military technology<\/a> could \u201cmake us go blind, deaf, and dumb in the first moments of a conflict,\u201d perhaps over Taiwan; Chinese cars<\/a> in particular are a \u201cnational security issue\u201d that can\u2019t be allowed to enter the country. <\/p>\n

The tone is always slightly condescending: At one point, Slotkin tells us about \u201cthe leader of China, Xi Jinping,\u201d as if we\u2019ve never heard of the guy before. The content is pure paranoia, with a new Cold War accepted as a normal and even desirable state of affairs.<\/p>\n

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\n Related <\/h2>\n

Washington\u2019s TikTok Ban Hypocrisy: Internet Censorship Is Good, Now<\/h3>\n

<\/span>
\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n

To be clear, the American people do not want conflict with China. In the most recent Pew polls from April, only 28 percent<\/a> of respondents said they considered China an \u201cenemy,\u201d and China\u2019s favorable ratings have been rising since 2023. <\/p>\n

But the CIA and the broader \u201cintelligence community\u201d needs global conflict, in the same way that cops need crime, priests need sin, and the Orkin man needs termites. It justifies their existence, and their mammoth, ever-increasing annual budgets<\/a>. So every week on YouTube, we get a former CIA agent pushing what\u2019s good for the CIA and bad for everyone else.<\/p>\n

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More basic than any of this, though, is that the concept of \u201cthe intelligence community\u201d is elitist to the core. Its first principle is that the American public, unwashed reprobates that we are, aren\u2019t even qualified to know about<\/em> the most important decisions being made in terms of foreign policy, let alone influence them at the ballot box. Only the \u201cintelligence community\u201d with its experts and analysts should do that, and always behind several layers of official secrecy. It\u2019s a fundamentally anti-democratic notion, and it comes from a set of agencies which have overthrown a long list of democracies over the years. So there\u2019s no reason to expect they\u2019d respect our democratic choices at home, either. If you\u2019re the Democratic Party, you can\u2019t really position yourself as champions of \u201cour democracy\u201d and also embrace the CIA Spook Caucus as an unalloyed good. <\/p>\n

As the maxim<\/a> goes, \u201cThe purpose of a system is what it does.\u201d To that end, the purpose of the CIA is to lie, manipulate, torture, and kill, all to preserve the existing global power structures, not to mention the agency\u2019s own power and prestige. That\u2019s what it does; that\u2019s what it\u2019s for. There\u2019s no way anybody, anywhere should trust a former CIA officer within 100 miles of elected office. Personally, I\u2019d vote for a Satanist or my local weed dealer before any member of the \u201cintelligence community.\u201d We should look at would-be Democratic politicians like Slotkin, Spanberger, and now Dunigan with the same horror as if Allen Dulles had run for Congress as a Democrat in 1965. Under no circumstances should we trust these people \u2014 and if we offer them our votes, we do so at our own peril.<\/p>\n

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The post Why Would Anyone Trust Ex-CIA Agents in Elected Office?<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n

#Trust #ExCIA #Agents #Elected #Office<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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