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central intelligence agency
Mysterious Attacks on Ecuadoran Fishing Boats Carried Out by Covert CIA Operation: Report
“It begs the question about why you would need to do this. What would be the purpose of the secrecy?” said a former US government official.
Aug 13, 2026
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that recent mysterious attacks on Ecuadoran fishing boats were carried out as part of a covert CIA operation.
According to the Post, the strikes on the fishing boats, which took place in multiple instances near the Galápagos Islands earlier this year, are separate from the US Department of Defense's bombing campaign against purported drug-trafficking boats that was launched in September 2025 and has so far killed at least 220 people.
Survivors of a boat attack that occurred in March told the Post they remember coming under fire from small quadcopter drones that either dropped munitions on their vessels or directly crashed into them.
After being shipwrecked, the survivors said they were picked up by a nearby vessel, where they were taken aboard, and "hooded and cuffed by armed men, and transported to El Salvador—only to be returned later without explanation to Ecuador."
The Post noted that "no evidence has publicly emerged that the crew members were involved in drug trafficking," adding that "the Galápagos Islands have increasingly become a hub for drug traffickers, where local fishermen are known to pick up jobs delivering gas to smugglers heading to the United States."
Some former US officials with experience working in Latin America told the Post that they were bewildered about the need for a covert CIA boat strike campaign given that the Trump administration has openly boasted about its other attacks on vessels, which many human rights groups and international law experts have called acts of murder.
“It begs the question about why you would need to do this,” one former official said. “What would be the purpose of the secrecy?”
The covert boat strikes were also reported on Wednesday by The New York Times, which presented evidence that they originated in the US without naming their specific source.
Amnesty International last month raised suspicions of US involvement in the January disappearance of Ecuadoran fishing boat called Fiorella.
Amnesty's investigation of the Fiorella's disappearance found that the vessel, in the days before its disappearance, was "allegedly subjected to sustained monitoring by aircraft, patrol boats, and drones bearing United States markings," as the boat's captain sent "daily satellite messages to his family expressing his growing concern about the surveillance."
The ship vanished on January 20.
Two crew members who had departed the ship earlier in the day on a skiff to lay out fishing lines reported seeing "a large column of smoke in the distance in the direction of the Fiorella, but were unable to determine with certainty whether it was from a fire on board," wrote Amnesty.
The two crew members aboard the skiff are the only confirmed survivors of the incident, as the eight other men aboard the Fiorella are still missing.
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The Third Door: How Covert Regime Change Slips Past the War Powers Resolution
Congress can stop a war it can see. It cannot stop one its members are forbidden to describe—and that is now the door the pressure campaign against Cuba has walked through.
Aug 13, 2026
Last December, writing here about unrest in Iran, I had to be careful. We must resist the temptation to treat capability as conspiracy, I wrote, while also resisting the delusion that absence of evidence means absence of action. That caution was owed to readers, because I could point to a history and a capability but not to an operation.
That caution is no longer necessary. In the first week of August, American newspapers reported that the Central Intelligence Agency has established a dedicated Cuba task force—case officers, analysts, cyber operators, specialists in covert influence—whose reported mandate is to create fissures among the Cuban political elite, in the hope of pressuring the replacement of officials deemed anti-American with leaders more agreeable to the president's demands. Cuba has been elevated to "Priority 1" in the intelligence community's collection framework, alongside China, Iran, and Russia. Satellites are being re-tasked. The Agency declined to comment.
We are told there are limits: no organized Cuban partners, no authority for lethal operations. We are also told, in the same breath, that the president may modify those authorities at any time.
What is remarkable here is not the operation. Lindsey A. O'Rourke's Covert Regime Change documents 64 covert American attempts to change foreign governments between 1947 and 1989, against six overt ones—a ratio of 10 to one. Only 25 succeeded even by the undemanding measure that an American-backed client took power. Her most damning finding is the one least quoted: States targeted for regime change—especially those that survived the attempt—were more likely to experience civil war or mass killing in the years that followed.
Covert action undertaken to alter the composition or constitutional order of a foreign government should be forbidden.
What is remarkable is that nothing in American law stands in the way—and that the reason has nothing to do with secrecy.
A Statute That Ends Things, and a Statute That Only Reports Them
The War Powers Resolution is not, at bottom, a reporting statute. It is a termination statute. It gives the president 48 hours to report and 60 days to finish, after which he shall terminate the use of the forces concerned unless Congress affirmatively says otherwise. Congressional silence ends the operation. That default is the whole of its design.
Covert action runs under an entirely different law, 50 U.S.C. §3093. There must be a written presidential finding. The intelligence committees must be kept "fully and currently informed." These are real constraints, born of real scandals, and it would be wrong to say Congress is blind.
But §3093 contains no clock, no expiry, and no vote—ever. A finding, once signed and reported, may run indefinitely. Silence continues it. And where a war powers report enters a public record on which any member may act, a finding goes to two committees behind closed doors, sometimes to eight members alone. Those outside may not be told; those inside may not speak. The floor vote that the War Powers Resolution treats as the ordinary constitutional remedy becomes structurally impossible, because a legislature cannot vote on what its members are forbidden to describe.
Then there is the definitional gap, which is the loophole properly so called. The resolution regulates the introduction of "United States Armed Forces" into hostilities. Case officers are not Armed Forces. Identical objective, identical target, identical effect—but a different statute, depending on which badge the operator carries.
I have argued in these pages that economic warfare capable of collapsing a foreign economy should be subject to reporting and time limits comparable to those governing armed force. I still believe it. But I have to report that it would not close this gap. The War Powers Resolution regulates a category of actor. An economic amendment would regulate a category of instrument. Any scheme built on categories will leak, because the executive may always choose the category nobody regulates. Only a rule keyed to effects will hold.
Consent That No One Can Authenticate
In January I argued here that Washington's claims of Venezuelan "cooperation" were null and void, because consent extracted under coercion is not consent. Covert action takes that one step further, and it is worse.
Suppose the task force succeeds. Suppose that some month soon the Cuban leadership is reconstituted, or a concession is made, or an agreement signed on precisely the terms demanded. Who will be able to say who authored it?
Not Congress, which will have seen a finding but not its consequences. Not the United Nations, whose bedrock principle protects a state's freedom to choose its own political and economic system without external coercion. Not the Cuban people, in whose name it would be done. Not the American public, in whose name it was mounted. And not the negotiators themselves—the same agency whose director flew to Havana in May to meet Cuba's interior minister, its intelligence chief, and the intermediary through whom talks are said to run is the agency now tasked with fracturing the leadership those talks would bind.
A settlement whose authorship cannot be established is a settlement no one can rely on—including the party that obtained it. Covert influence aimed at the composition of a foreign government does not merely violate the norm against intervention. It destroys the evidence by which compliance with that norm could ever be judged.
The Trap in the Obvious Remedy
The obvious answer is to regulate: an effects-based trigger reaching any sustained effort to alter a foreign government's composition, whichever agency conducts it; a finding that expires by law unless renewed by recorded committee vote; a path by which a committee can reach the full Congress in closed session.
I proposed exactly that, and then thought better of the framing. A statute that regulates a practice licenses it. Write a clock for operations aimed at foreign governments and you have conceded that such operations are lawfully available—and that concession reaches backward across O'Rourke's 64, converting a record of illegality into the quaint era before the paperwork. This is, not coincidentally, what intelligence services themselves have long wanted: Statutory footing transfers the risk from the officer to the statute. The vocabulary follows on its own. Subversion becomes stabilization. Regime change becomes democratic transition assistance. Fracturing an elite becomes engagement with reform-minded elements.
So the operative provision must be prohibition, not licensing. Covert action undertaken to alter the composition or constitutional order of a foreign government should be forbidden. The trigger, the clock, and the escalation path are then not the scheme but its enforcement—and the governing rule for the intelligence work that legitimately remains: collection, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, counterproliferation.
What Is at Stake in Havana
None of this is abstract in Cuba right now. On August 2 the national grid collapsed for the sixth time this year. On August 3 the restoration itself failed, and it collapsed again. The country's own energy minister said plainly that Cuba has no fuel and expects none in the volumes it needs, and that containers of solar panels, food, and medicines sit held at nearby ports—some destined for children whose medical condition depends on electricity. On August 6, United Nations experts said the humanitarian consequences are unfolding into a full-blown crisis, called the measures incompatible with Article 2 of the Charter, and urged the Security Council and General Assembly to take the matter up as one of international peace and security.
Into that, we have now introduced an effort to fracture a political elite. Whatever one thinks of the Cuban government—and one may think a great deal—an operation of that kind, in a country in that condition, is not an operation with a narrow band of outcomes. It sits adjacent to the conditions in which atrocity becomes possible.
Congress can stop a war it can see. Six months ago I asked in these pages whose job it is when Congress can no longer stop an unauthorized war. The answer keeps narrowing, and the doors keep multiplying. Two have been narrowed. A third stands open, and we have just been told, in the newspaper, that someone has walked through it.
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US, Turkish Officials Suspect 'Plot' That Led to Trump Plane Switch Was Israeli Ruse
A former top US intelligence official said the reliance on apparently faulty Israeli intelligence was "a great example of how we got into the war with Iran."
Aug 13, 2026
US and Turkish officials are reportedly suspicious that the supposed Iranian assassination plot that led President Donald Trump to make an elaborate escape from Ankara using a catering truck last month may have been a fabrication by Israeli intelligence.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Trump had to be secreted onto a nondescript plane to leave a NATO summit on July 8 after Israel passed an intelligence report to the CIA warning that Iran had planned to launch a missile at Air Force One. But new reporting indicates that neither Turkish nor American officials found the evidence all that compelling.
The alleged threat came at a highly volatile time, as the "memorandum of understanding" between the US and Iran to end nearly five months of war was on the verge of collapse, in part thanks to Israel's attempts to undermine it.
As Middle East Eye reported on Tuesday, Turkish officials suggested that the intelligence report was “probably a ruse by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s government to portray itself as protecting Trump, derail negotiations with Iran, and undermine Trump’s apparently close relationship with [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan].”
Turkey tightened security after US officials informed it of the plot. But after examining the details of the scheme—which purportedly involved using shoulder-fired missiles to attack Trump’s plane within a kilometer of the runway—they said they found the intelligence report highly implausible.
“Of course, we took the report very seriously and tried to assist our American counterparts as much as possible,” one person familiar with the matter said. “Yet it was very clear to us that there was no way this report was true.”
It turns out that it wasn't just Turkish officials who felt this way. The Washington Post on Wednesday cited a senior US official who said that the CIA analysts who'd received the report from Israel "did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials."
Another official said the report was “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence.” The Secret Service acted on the report anyway out of an abundance of caution.
Nevertheless, the Post indicated that there was a striking amount of doubt among US intelligence officials about the motives of one of the country's top allies, whom they suggest passed the information along to nudge Washington toward Israel's own foreign policy objectives:
Some US intelligence officials saw Israel’s sharing of the warning about threats to Trump’s life as designed less to inform than to influence the president’s decision-making and US policy in the region, a current and a former US official said. Israel views Iran as by far its most urgent near-term threat.
But it views Turkey as a medium- to long-term threat and is anxious about warming ties between Washington and Ankara, bolstered by the personal rapport between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current official said.
It “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it,” the former official familiar with the matter said.
Iranian leaders have denied any attempt to assassinate Trump. As they try to push him to admit defeat in the war the US and Israel started in February and accept a series of harsh surrender terms, they are having a laugh at his reaction to what they say was a fabricated plot.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, portrayed it as part of a larger pattern of the US having been misled by faulty Israeli intelligence.
Netanyahu was notably one of the driving forces behind Trump’s mistaken belief that an operation to topple the Iranian government would be quick and painless.
"The US has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures," Araghchi wrote Thursday on social media. "Case in point: The war on Iran. Now, an even bigger miscalculation on the Strait of Hormuz."
"Worse than fake news is fake intelligence," he said. "Be careful."
Joe Kent, the former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned in March after accusing Trump of being manipulated into starting the war by false reports that Iran posed an imminent threat, said that “the story of Trump secretly switching airplanes is actually a great example of how we got into the war with Iran... ‘Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence’ by our own intelligence agencies.”
"It’s smart to take all threats seriously," Kent said. "But if you’re basing a decision about going to war on information from a liaison intel service or an 'ally,' it’s important to remember they are most certainly providing that information to influence us as well as inform us."
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'Bay of Pigs Reloaded': New CIA Task Force to Further Destabilize Cuba Revealed
The revelation comes as the State Department "has been on a full-throttle media blitz," noted one writer, "painting Cuba as an espionage superpower and a threat to US national security."
Aug 05, 2026
After months of President Donald Trump threatening a US takeover of Cuba and ramping up a decadeslong economic assault of the island, The New York Times revealed Wednesday that the Central Intelligence Agency created a related task force, "setting in motion plans for a more concerted campaign to pressure the Cuban government to make the economic, political, and leadership changes."
"In 1960, the CIA established an earlier Cuba task force, whose members oversaw the failed, agency-backed invasion of Cuba the next year known as the Bay of Pigs," the newspaper noted. "The people briefed on the new task force said its mandate is more limited: to create fissures among the Cuban political elite, in hope of pressuring the Cubans to replace perceived anti-American hard-liners with more practical leaders more amenable to Mr. Trump's demands."
Despite the anonymous sources' claims about the differences from over a half-century ago, Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who wrote multiple books about former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, simply responded, "Bay of Pigs reloaded."
The Times article—on which the CIA declined to comment—came a day after Politico reported that "the US has increased its intelligence assets in Cuba in recent months as it pushes the country's communist regime to reform or fall from power, according to two people familiar with the Trump administration's plans for the island."
The agency also declined to comment on Politico's piece, which pointed out that "US military operations are often preceded by increased American intelligence activity. CIA efforts to track the whereabouts of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro reportedly played a critical role this January in the successful US operation to capture him."
Sharing Politico's coverage on social media, Andrés Pertierra, a Cuba historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that it is "hard to say at this point to what degree this is theater aimed at rattling the cage in Havana or performing strength to Miami, on the one hand, or some kind of prelude to an actual escalation, on the other, given recent months of warnings of escalation that went nowhere."
Enrique "Ric" Prado, a Cuban exile who served in various posts at the CIA, "is convinced that Washington is preparing a definitive blow against the island regime," El País reported early Wednesday. He predicted, "Cuba is the next apple to fall from the tree."
This week's reporting followed the July release of a "McCarthyite" US Department of State document that was widely decried as an "attack on Americans' constitutional rights to free speech and assembly," as well as an attempt to justify an invasion of Cuba, where the Trump administration has fueled a humanitarian crisis.
"For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States," the department's report begins, "that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history."
Promoting the publication on social media, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island—claimed his department was "exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country."
During a Sunday interview with Fox News host Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, Rubio repeated claims from the report and called the island nation, about 90 miles south of Florida and home to roughly 10 million people, "an influence and espionage superpower." His comments drew criticism from Democrats in Congress, the Cuban foreign minister, and other experts.
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Leaked CIA Analysis Shows Trump and Hegseth 'Lied Through Their Teeth' About Iran War, Says Murphy
White House officials "just straight up fabricated shit," said the Democratic senator from Connecticut.
May 07, 2026
Just hours before the Trump administration conducted what it claimed were "self-defense strikes" against "Iranian military facilities," The Washington Post reported Thursday that the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that "Iran can survive the US naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship."
Citing four unnamed officials familiar with the analysis, the newspaper highlighted that "the CIA analysis might even be underestimating Iran's economic resilience if Tehran is able to smuggle oil via overland routes."
Militarily, "Iran retains about 75% of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70% of its prewar stockpiles of missiles," the Post added. "There is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles, and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began."
Drop Site News' Murtaza Hussain responded that if this assessment along with a previous one from the Center for Strategic and International Studies about "remaining US munitions and interceptor capacity are even approximately correct, it goes a long way to explaining why Trump seems so eager to end the war whereas the Iranians have either dug in or escalated their negotiating positions. The missile math of continuing the conflict would be much more favorable to the Iranians, especially if the war continued for a significant time."
"Prior to the war, interceptor capacity compared to the size of the Iranian missile stockpile seemed like the most rationally incontrovertible reason to avoid fighting such a conflict, even for people who found it politically desirable," he added. "This also might explain why the US and Israel pivoted towards the end to threatening countervalue strikes against civilian targets if attempts to destroy the underground missile cities by air were ineffective."
The Post's reporting came one month into a fragile ceasefire and starkly contrasts the recent framing of conditions in Iran from President Donald Trump and others in his administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) responded to the Post's reporting by quoting Hegseth, who said in March that "never before has a modern, capable military, which Iran used to have, been so quickly destroyed and made combat ineffective."
Murphy declared: "They lied through their teeth. Just straight up fabricated shit."
Still, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly stuck to the administration's framing in a Thursday statement to the Post.
"During Operation Epic Fury, Iran was crushed militarily," Kelly said. "Now, they are being strangled economically by Operation Economic Fury and losing $500 million per day thanks to the United States military's successful blockade of Iranian ports. The Iranian regime knows full well their current reality is not sustainable, and President Trump holds all the cards as negotiators work to make a deal."
Meanwhile, some experts were unsurprised that the CIA privately delivered a "sober" assessment contradicting the administration's public commentary on the conflict—which it now claims is no longer an active "war," seemingly to dodge a key congressional deadline.
"Nice to know that a confidential CIA analysis is confirming what close observers of the Iranian economy have been saying publicly for weeks! Intelligent policymakers rely on intelligence. But Trump jeopardized diplomacy by instigating a blockade that was never going to work," said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Europe and founder of the think tank Bourse & Bazaar Foundation.
Sharing the reporting on social media, Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at the think tank Defense Priorities, wrote: "As I argued a week into the U.S. blockade, Iran can hold out for months without economic collapse. The costs for the US and the world are increasingly unsustainable, however."
Earlier this week, Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, estimated that the US government spent $71.8 billion on the Iran War during its first 60 days, an average of $1.2 billion daily. The International Monetary Fund warned last month that the conflict could cause a global recession.
Last Friday, Trump responded to the War Powers Act's 60-day deadline by claiming to Congress that his war—which already violated US and international law—had been "terminated." The White House said at the time that no fire had been exchanged since April 7, when a ceasefire deal was reached just hours after the president issued a genocidal threat against the Iranian people.
However, on Thursday evening, United States Central Command announced that Iran "launched multiple missiles, drones, and small boats" at American warships. CENTCOM added that it "eliminated inbound threats and targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces, including missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance nodes."
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'Wyden Siren' Sounds Anew as Senator's Cryptic Letter Hints at CIA Wrongdoing
"When Wyden sends a cryptic letter or asks a pointed question suggesting something concerning is happening behind the classification curtain, something concerning is absolutely happening," said one observer.
Feb 05, 2026
Sen. Ron Wyden "only talks like this when the spies do something *real* bad."
That's how journalist Spencer Ackerman reacted Thursday to a letter from the Oregon Democrat to Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe expressing alarm over unspecified CIA activities, as observers noted Wyden's history of heads-up previews of government wrongdoing.
“I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today, in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities,” Wyden, who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in the letter. “Thank you for your attention to this important matter.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner “shares many of the concerns expressed by Sen. Wyden in his letter, and in fact he has expressed them to... Ratcliffe himself," according to a spokesperson for the Virginia Democrat.
This is how Sen. Ron Wyden clues the public into activity that he finds extremely alarming. He does a press release about a letter he sent to the director of the CIA that basically says, 'I want to make sure you saw the classified letter I sent early today.' www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/do...
[image or embed]
— Kashmir Hill (@kashhill.bsky.social) February 4, 2026 at 1:53 PM
Wyden told HuffPost Thursday that “the reason I sent the public letter is that is all that I’m allowed to say publicly, and I’m gonna leave it at that.”
“I said what I did for a specific reason," he added. "I wrote it for a specific reason. That’s all I can say.”
Wyden has a storied history of issuing cryptic warnings about classified government or intelligence misdeeds before they are disclosed to the public, going back to the Obama administration's secret reinterpretation of the PATRIOT Act in 2011.
The senator also warned about a withheld 2015 Department of Justice legal opinion on cybersecurity, Section 702 surveillance during the first Trump administration, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) use of bulk administrative subpoenas to collect millions of Americans’ financial records during the Biden administration, and more.
Techdirt blog editor Mike Masnick calls it the "Wyden Siren": "The pattern repeats. Wyden asks a specific question about surveillance. The intelligence community answers a slightly different question in a way that technically isn’t lying but is designed to mislead. Wyden calls them out. Eventually, the truth comes out, and it’s always worse than people assumed."
"The track record here is essentially perfect," Masnick added. "When Wyden sends a cryptic letter or asks a pointed question suggesting something concerning is happening behind the classification curtain, something concerning is absolutely happening behind the classification curtain."
Masnick continued:
So what’s happening at the CIA that has Wyden sending a two-sentence letter that amounts to “I legally cannot tell you what’s wrong, but something is very wrong?"
We don’t know yet. That’s the whole point of classification—it keeps the public in the dark about what their government is doing in their name. But Wyden’s letter is the equivalent of a fire alarm. He’s seen something. He can’t say what. But he wants there to be a record that he raised the concern.
"Given the current administration’s approach to, well, everything, the possibilities are unfortunately vast," Masnick said. "Is it about domestic surveillance? Something about current [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard? International operations gone sideways? Some new interpretation of the CIA’s authorities that would make Americans’ hair stand on end if they knew about it? We’re left guessing, just like we were guessing about the PATRIOT Act’s secret interpretation back in 2011."
"But here’s what we do know: Ron Wyden has been doing this for at least 15 years," Masnick added. "And every single time, he’s been vindicated. The secret programs were real. The abuses were real. The gap between what the public thought was happening and what was actually happening was real."
"The Wyden Siren is blaring," he added. "Pay attention."
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Unrest in Iran, Plausible Deniability, and the Ghosts of 1953
In a world where information warfare blurs fact and narrative, we must resist the temptation to treat capability as conspiracy. But we must also resist the delusion that the absence of evidence today means an absence of action.
Dec 31, 2025
Speculation about covert operations tends to rise with geopolitical heat, and few places are as historically charged as Iran when it comes to foreign interference. The memory of the 1953 CIA-backed coup remains vivid in Tehran’s political consciousness, shaping both internal paranoia and external discourse. In today’s climate of US-Iran hostility—marked by sanctions, nuclear disputes, and regional proxy conflicts—whispers of destabilization efforts inevitably resurface. But plausibility should not be mistaken for proof.
Yet there are ghosts worth heeding…
In 1953, the CIA executed Operation TPAJAX—a covert operation that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, reinstating the autocratic Shah. This operation was denied, downplayed, and hidden for decades. It wasn’t until 2017—64 years later—that the US government officially declassified key documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series detailing the planning and implementation of the coup. The materials that confirmed America’s role in the 1953 coup were not fully acknowledged through official channels until generations had passed, long after their geopolitical consequences had reshaped the Middle East.
Given that historical precedent, it’s not unreasonable to wonder: If something like that were happening today, would we know?
If the CIA is involved in orchestrating unrest in Iran today, we may not know until 2089.
Currently, Iran is again roiled by protests. Slogans like “Death to the Dictator” echo in the streets. Western headlines frame this as grassroots unrest, and it may well be. But for a country with a long and painful history of foreign interference cloaked in democracy rhetoric, the line between internal dissent and external orchestration is never clean.
From a strategic standpoint, the United States clearly possesses the capacity to conduct covert influence operations. Legal mechanisms for such actions exist under US law, with covert operations authorized by the president and subject to congressional oversight. The intelligence community, with decades of institutional experience, is equipped with modern tools ranging from cyber operations to narrative influence and financial pressure. These capabilities are real. But capacity alone tells us nothing about intent.
Public policy statements from the US government consistently emphasize deterrence and nonproliferation, not regime change. While tensions are undeniable, open endorsement of covert destabilization would carry significant political and legal costs. Congress, the media, and public opinion create substantial friction for any administration considering escalation by clandestine means. Adversarial relationships can foster suspicion, but they do not constitute motive.
Environmental conditions further complicate the picture. Iran, despite internal pressures and unrest, retains a strong security apparatus and hardened counter-intelligence services. Regional dynamics—involving militias, proxies, and overlapping crises—do not create the same permissive environment that existed in the early Cold War. On the contrary, they elevate the risks of blowback and exposure. Modern operations would need to be diffuse, multi domain, and plausibly deniable—relying on soft pressure through economic levers, information warfare, and alliances rather than the heavy-handed political interventions of the past.
And yet, these more nuanced forms of influence are precisely what make attribution difficult. In a world of cyber shadows, targeted sanctions, and disinformation, it’s easy to see ghosts. But serious allegations require serious evidence. Credible investigative reporting, declassified documents, congressional disputes, or allied intelligence consensus are necessary to move the needle from theoretical possibility to actionable suspicion—let alone attribution.
That’s where Dan Kovalik’s The Plot to Attack Iran enters the conversation. Kovalik draws clear lines from historical US interventions—including the CIA's own admission of past regime change—to present-day provocations and misinformation. He details a long history of fabricated threats, from nonexistent Iraqi WMDs to exaggerated fears about Iran’s nuclear program. He argues that current rhetoric and actions—sanctions, assassinations, drone incursions, proxy pressures—form a consistent pattern of provocation meant to destabilize Iran under the guise of security policy.
Kovalik also reminds us that accusations of terrorism, often leveled at Iran, are selectively applied. While Iran is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, US allies like Saudi Arabia—implicated in exporting Wahhabi extremism—are exempt from such labels. Groups like Hezbollah, which Iran supports, are framed by the US as terroristic, while Kovalik argues they act in regional resistance to Israeli occupation. This asymmetry of language is not just semantic—it builds the ideological scaffolding for war.
Legal oversight, international norms, and the specter of asymmetric retaliation all serve as meaningful deterrents. A misstep in this space could trigger regional escalation, damage US credibility, or backfire diplomatically. These are not trivial constraints. They are built-in brakes against rash or covert adventurism. And yet, none of them prevented the 1953 coup. Nor did they stop covert operations in Iraq, Libya, or Syria. History shows us that legal deterrents and political norms often collapse under the weight of perceived strategic necessity.
Bottom line: While it is analytically sound to say the United States could conduct covert operations against Iran under the right conditions, there is no defensible basis to assert that such actions are underway without evidence. Plausibility is not a claim—it is a lens for understanding risk, not a substitute for proof.
But perhaps the more sobering truth is this: If the CIA is involved in orchestrating unrest in Iran today, we may not know until 2089. Sixty-four years is a long time to wait for the truth. In that gap, entire wars can be fought, nations broken, and histories rewritten. The ghosts of TPAJAX aren’t just historical—they’re prophetic. And Iran, perhaps more than any other nation, knows that ghosts have long memories.
In a world where information warfare blurs fact and narrative, we must resist the temptation to treat capability as conspiracy. But we must also resist the delusion that the absence of evidence today means an absence of action. The stakes—diplomatic, strategic, and human—are far too high for anything less than disciplined analysis and historical awareness.
The past may not repeat, but it whispers—and in Iran, it is whispering loudly.
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Trump, Who Incited Jan 6 Insurrection, Wants Sedition Charges for Lawmakers Reminding Troops of Duty to Disobey Illegal Orders
"If you're threatening Dems for reminding the military that they are obligated to not follow illegal orders, you're admitting your orders are illegal."
Nov 20, 2025
Nearly five years after inciting an attempted insurrection, President Donald Trump on Thursday called for sedition charges against Democrats in Congress who reminded members of the US military and intelligence services that "you must refuse illegal orders."
"We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now," says Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, in the 90-second video circulated on social media Tuesday.
Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), a former Navy captain, notes in the video that "like us, you all swore an oath" to the US Constitution
Reps. Jason Crow (Colo.), Chris Deluzio (Pa.), Maggie Goodlander (NH), and Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.)—all veterans of the US military and intelligence community—join the senators in calling on service members to stand up to any illegal orders from the Trump administration and "don't give up the ship."
Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security who anonymously spoke out against Trump in a high-profile op-ed and book during his first term, said that it is "pretty insane that we are living in a moment where a video message like this [is] necessary."
Also responding to the video on the platform X, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, claimed that "Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection."
Kelly hit back, citing the January 6, 2021 attack: "I got shot at serving our country in combat, and I was there when your boss sent a violent mob to attack the Capitol. I know the difference between defending our Constitution and an insurrection, even if you don't."
Slotkin also responded, saying: "This is the law. Passed down from our Founding Fathers, to ensure our military upholds its oath to the Constitution—not a king. Given you're directing much of a military policy, you should buff up on the Uniformed Code of Military Justice."
Trump weighed in on his Truth Social platform just after 9:00 am on Thursday morning, writing: "It's called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand—We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET."
"This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???," Trump continued, linking to the right-wing Washington Examiner's coverage and signing both posts "President DJT."
Just over an hour later, the president added, "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!"
Responding with a lengthy joint statement, the lawmakers behind the video reiterated their commitment to the oaths they took, and said that "what's most telling is that the president considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law."
"Our servicemembers should know that we have their backs as they fulfill their oath to the Constitution and obligation to follow only lawful orders," they added. "Every American must unite and condemn the president's calls for our murder and political violence. This is a time for moral clarity."
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—who has for years faced threats from Trump supporters, including Arizona state Rep. John Gillette (R-30) in September—stressed that the president's "calls for political violence are completely unacceptable."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), another frequent target of right-wing threats, similarly took aim at Trump's sedition remarks, saying, "None of this is normal."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the chamber's floor Thursday: "Let's be crystal clear: The president of the United States is calling for the execution of elected officials. This is an outright threat, and it's deadly serious. We have already seen what happens when Donald Trump tells his followers that his political opponents are enemies of the state."
"We all remember what January 6th was like. We lived through January 6th. We have lived through the assassinations and attempted assassinations this year. We have members whose families have had to flee their homes," he continued. "When Donald Trump uses the language of execution and treason, some of his supporters may very well listen. He is lighting a match in a country soaked with political gasoline. Every senator, every representative, every American—regardless of party—should condemn this immediately and without qualification."
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, said Thursday: "Trump tried to overthrow our government almost five years ago, and is calling for Dems to be put to death for sedition. If you're threatening Dems for reminding the military that they are obligated to not follow illegal orders, you're admitting your orders are illegal."
The Democrats' video and Trump's outburst come as members of Congress and legal experts lambast the Trump administration's deadly bombings of boats allegedly running drugs in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. Critics have emphasized that even if the targeted vessels are transporting illicit substances, the strikes are illegal.
Trump is also under fire for his attacks on immigrants in Democrat-led communities. Kelly and Slotkin, along with Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), and Ron Wyden (Ore.), recently introduced the No Troops in Our Streets Act, which would limit the administration's ability to deploy the National Guard and inject $1 billion in new resources to fight crime across the country.
"Our brave military men and women signed up to defend the Constitution and our rights, not to be used as political props or silence dissent," said Duckworth, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who has been especially critical of the administration's operation in the Chicagoland area, including efforts to deploy the National Guard there.
"These un-American, unjustified deployments of troops into our cities do nothing to fight crime—they only serve to intimidate Americans in their own neighborhoods," she added. "I'm introducing this legislation with my colleagues to stop Trump's gross misuse of our military and devote more resources toward efforts that would actually help our local law enforcement—which Trump has actually defunded to the tune of $800 million."
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Trump Admin Reportedly OKs CIA Action in Venezuela Amid Growing Alarm Over Bombed Boats
The reporting came as rights groups sought the legal memo on the president's deadly strikes on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean.
Oct 15, 2025
As outrage over US President Donald Trump's deadly boat bombings mounts, The New York Times reported Wednesday that his administration secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency "to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean," with the ultimate aim of ousting the country's leader, Nicolás Maduro.
"The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation," according to the Times, which cited unnamed US officials. "It is not known whether the CIA is planning any operations in Venezuela or if the authorities are meant as a contingency."
"But the development comes as the US military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela," the newspaper noted. The administration's Venezuela strategy was "developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the CIA director."
The White House and CIA declined to comment on record, though some observers speculated it was "an authorized leak." The reporting comes as Democrats in Congress, human rights groups, and legal scholars sound the alarm of Trump's five known strikes on boats he claims were smuggling drugs, which have killed at least 27 people.
Critics highlighted the United States' long history of covert action in Latin America, as well as how the reported CIA authorization contrasts with Trump's so-called "America First" claims.
"This is absolutely insane," said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama administration official who went on to co-found Crooked Media. "America First was not sold as CIA regime change operations in Venezuela."
Critics also noted Trump's mission to secure the Nobel Peace Prize; this year, it went to María Corina Machado, a right-wing Venezuelan who dedicated the award to not only the people in her country, but also the US president.
"Now that Trump has delegated his preposterous politicking for a Nobel Peace Prize to sycophants, he can finally get around to declaring unilateral war on Venezuela, a war crime, as he murders Colombian civilians at sea, another war crime, and endorses collective punishment in Gaza, another war crime," journalist Seth Abramson said Wednesday.
As Senate Democrats last week unsuccessfully fought to stop Trump's boat strikes of the Venezuelan coast, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on social media that one of the bombed vessels appeared to be carrying citizens of his country.
"A new war zone has opened: the Caribbean," he said at the time. "Evidence shows that the last boat bombed was Colombian, with Colombian citizens inside. I hope their families come forward and file complaints. There isn't a war against smuggling; it's a war for oil, and the world must stop it. The aggression is against all of Latin America and the Caribbean."
The Trump administration recently claimed in a confidential notice to Congress intended to justify the deadly bombings that the president decided drug cartels "are nonstate armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States."
While that notice leaked to the press, the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on Wednesday filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the Office of Legal Counsel's guidance and other related documents regarding the strikes.
"All available evidence suggests that President Trump's lethal strikes in the Caribbean constitute murder, pure and simple," said Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project. "The public deserves to know how our government is justifying these attacks as lawful, and, given the stakes, immediate public scrutiny of its apparently radical theories is imperative."
CCR legal director Baher Azmy stressed that "in a constitutional system, no president can arbitrarily choose to assassinate individuals from the sky based on his whim or say-so."
"The Trump administration is taking its indiscriminate pattern of lawlessness to a lethal level," Azmy added. "The public understanding of any rationale supporting such unprecedented and shocking conduct is essential for transparency and accountability."
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Trump Follows the Grand US Tradition of Ignoring Intelligence to Go to War
Trump’s cavalier attitude about the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies is just the most recent example of presidents ignoring what they did not want to hear.
Jun 28, 2025
I’ll never forget the day I was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. What does that have to do with President Donald Trump bombing Iran? I’ll get there, so indulge me.
It was the spring of 1983, and I was sitting in an auditorium at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia with my fellow classmates. We were a select group of Columbia University graduate students in the school’s International Fellows Program, and we were in Washington, D.C. for dog and pony shows sponsored by the CIA, State Department, and other federal agencies looking for fresh young talent. I was in the journalism program. Everyone else was studying law, business, or international relations.
After two CIA officers droned on interminably about China, which was not making much news at the time, an over-caffeinated HR officer took the stage. “We need people like you,” she said. “We can’t have good policy without good intelligence, so we’d like you to consider applying here.” She then mentioned that five of the fellows had interned at the agency the previous summer and asked them to hold up their hands, which they did reluctantly. Given the CIA’s terrible reputation at the time, it was understandable why they didn’t want to acknowledge that they had worked there.
Presidents don’t give a fig about what the CIA or any other intelligence agency tells them. They will do what they want, regardless, and Congress does little to nothing to rein them in.
The HR lady then asked if there were any questions. My hand shot up, and she called on me first.
Earlier that morning I picked up a copy of The Washington Post, which ran a story on its front page reporting that the CIA, under President Ronald Reagan’s direction, had dedicated millions of dollars to undermine the fledgling Nicaraguan government, which had overthrown a corrupt dictator four years before. I thanked her for her presentation and then said: “I’m really interested in applying to work at the CIA, but I’m not interested in doing intelligence work. I’m interested in covert action. I’m interested in destabilizing sovereign nations like Nicaragua. How do I apply?”
There was dead silence, and then students began to snicker. The HR lady, meanwhile, was speechless, but she quickly regained her composure and said, “I don’t know anything about that, but the application procedure is the same.”
After a few other, more serious, questions, the session was over. But before I could get up from my seat, I felt the steely grip of the man who ran the program, the extremely conservative dean of Columbia’s graduate school of international affairs. He was not happy. He squeezed my shoulder as hard as he could and said, “Mr. Negin.” (He never addressed us by our first names.) “I want you to know that everything that was said here today is off the record.”
I’m proud to say that, until today, I have honored his off-the-record request. There was nothing newsworthy to report, anyway. But given the incident happened more than 40 years ago, I’m not too worried about recounting it now, especially since it will help make a point.
I Don’t Care What She Said!
Of course, that CIA recruiter was absolutely right. To have good policy, government officials need good intelligence. What she didn’t say, however, is what we learned yet again this past week: Presidents don’t give a fig about what the CIA or any other intelligence agency tells them. They will do what they want, regardless, and Congress does little to nothing to rein them in.
On June 17, when a reporter on Air Force One reminded President Trump that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had testified before Congress in March that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, his reply was: “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”
In response, Gabbard backtracked, posting on X on June 20 that “dishonest media” took her testimony out of context and Iran could produce nuclear weapons “within weeks to months.”
But that does not mean that Iran is building a bomb.
A handful of officials told The Wall Street Journal last week that the intelligence Israel provided the United States to make its case for attacking Iran did not convince them that Tehran is intent on building a nuclear bomb. “The [Israeli] intelligence only showed Iran was still researching nuclear weapons,” two officials told the paper, “including revisiting work it had done before its nuclear weapons program shut down in 2003.” Although the United States estimates that it would likely take Iran one to two weeks to produce enough enriched uranium for a weapon, “the consensus view among U.S. intelligence agencies,” the Journal reported, “is Iran hasn’t made a decision to move forward on building a bomb.”
Nevertheless, on June 21, the U.S. Air Force flattened three Iranian nuclear sites, and it remains to be seen if the attack will lead to any unfortunate, unforeseen consequences. Two days later, Iran lobbed missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar, which said its air defenses intercepted. Then, later that day, Trump announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a cease-fire, but as of the next morning, they both violated it.
Damn the Intelligence, Full-Speed Ahead!
Trump’s cavalier attitude about the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies is just the most recent example of presidents ignoring what they did not want to hear. One obvious example is when President Lyndon Johnson paid no heed to warnings about a potential quagmire in Vietnam. Another is when President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 under false pretenses.
In early 1963, the CIA cautioned Johnson about intensifying U.S. intervention in Vietnam nearly a year before the now-disputed Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964. The agency suggested that bombing Vietnam would “provoke heavier troop intervention” rather than ensuring a victory. Three days after the incident, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, essentially giving Johnson a blank check to escalate U.S involvement.
We all know how that turned out. From 1961 through 1973, the United States spent more than $141 billion on the war, more than $1 trillion in today’s dollars, and as many as 3.4 million people died, including more than 58,300 U.S. servicemembers, between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers, some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters, and as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides.
Pretty frustrating, no? To spend all that time trying to dig up “good intelligence” and then have it ignored. Especially when scores of lives are lost and survivors have to suffer with their injuries, both physical and psychological.
In October 2002, a month after al Qaeda stunned the United States by attacking New York and Washington, the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan to eliminate al Qaeda and topple the Taliban government. Two years later, the United States invaded Iraq, ostensibly because Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was connected to al Qaeda and possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), neither of which was true.
There is a mountain of evidence that the Bush administration cooked the books to justify invading Iraq, much too much to post here. Suffice it to say that senior U.S. intelligence officials and analysts have testified that Bush and his administration disregarded intelligence that didn’t support their goal of removing Hussein.
In an essay in the March-April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, for example, former national intelligence officer Paul Pillar accused the White House of manipulating intelligence on Iraq’s alleged WMD. He said the administration ignored any intelligence that did not align with its intention to invade. “It went to war without requesting—and evidently without being influenced by—any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq,” he wrote. The “broadly held” intelligence assessment, he added, was that the best way to address the Iraqi weapons issue was through an aggressive inspections program to supplement the sanctions already in place.
In late April 2006, CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who revealed that the agency had received credible intelligence from Iraq’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri, that there were no active WMD programs. “We continued to validate [Sabri] the whole way through,” said Drumheller. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”
Finally, a September 2007 article in Salon by Sidney Blumenthal confirmed Drumheller’s account. Two former senior CIA officers told Blumenthal that in September 2002, then CIA Director George Tenet briefed Bush on top-secret intelligence from Sabri that Hussein did not have WMD. Bush rejected the information, which turned out to be completely accurate, as worthless. The former CIA officers added that Tenet did not share that intelligence with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell nor with senior military officers planning the invasion. “Instead,” Blumenthal wrote, “…the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs.”
The Iraqi war’s toll was considerable. From 2003 through 2011, when the U.S. military officially withdrew, the United States spent $728 billion (in 2022 dollars) directly on the war, according to a Pentagon estimate. Nearly 4,500 U.S. servicemembers died, while nearly 32,300 were wounded, and some 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed.
A Bookend to My CIA Recruitment Caper
A few years after the Bush-Cheney Iraq debacle, I bumped into one of my classmates who had interned at the CIA before we met at the International Fellows Program. He showed up at my weekly yoga class, of all places. I hadn’t seen him since we were at Columbia. After exchanging pleasantries, I asked him if he wound up working for the CIA. Indeed, he had. “So, do you like working there?” I asked. “It’s less than inspiring,” he replied. Why? Because, he said, policymakers reject the agency’s findings if they don’t support their preconceived notion of what to do.
Pretty frustrating, no? To spend all that time trying to dig up “good intelligence” and then have it ignored. Especially when scores of lives are lost and survivors have to suffer with their injuries, both physical and psychological.
In retrospect, I’m glad I turned down that offer to apply to work at the CIA. I obviously made the right choice. No way I would ever be happy there, even with a job destabilizing sovereign nations.
]This column was originally posted on Money Trail, a new Substack site co-founded by Elliott Negin.
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