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Last week The Washington Post chose the front page of its print edition to trumpet what purported to be a major new discovery in the murder of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963: that the Central Intelligence Agency had a “connection with JFK’s assassin,”  Lee Harvey Oswald. The story virtually implicated the CIA in Kennedy’s murder—a venerable trope among many fringe assassination researchers.

The story, by Post criminal justice reporter, Tom Jackman, claimed that "new documents" declassified by the Trump administration revealed how a shadowy CIA covert officer oversaw an "operation" that "interacted" with Oswald before the assassination, raising “further questions about the agency’s awareness— or involvement in—the plot to murder the president.”

It was an astonishing, even bone-chilling claim, one that certainly deserved such prominent placement and implicit endorsement by The Post—had it been true. But it was entirely false. On closer examination, the story turned out to be an unfiltered, unchecked transmission of willful document misinterpretations purveyed by a longtime JFK murder conspiracies peddler. 

IRAN DAMAGE CONTROL: Despite President Trump’s claim that U.S. airstrikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, a recent intelligence assessment tells a different story.

NBC News led The New York Times and The Washington Post in reporting that of the three enrichment facilities bombed in June—Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow—only Fordow was “mostly destroyed” (according to NBC News) or “potentially destroyed” (per the New York Times) with operations likely delayed by at least two years of intensive work. 

The other two sites, which were also buried deep underground, were not as badly damaged and could be operational again within months, although such efforts would be detected by U.S. intelligence. That lines up with an initial Defense Intelligence Agency report, to which Trump responded with characteristic bluster by threatening to sue the journalists who reported it. 

Even as Trump’s White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly continues to claim total destruction of the targets, there have been discussions within the U.S. and Israeli governments about whether additional strikes could be necessary.

A principal author of the  controversial 2017 U.S. intelligence report about Russian interference in the American presidential election sharply criticized CIA director John Ratcliffe for releasing an internal analysis criticizing her work, describing his actions—including sending a criminal referral to the Justice Department—as a “100 percent” political move designed to placate President Trump. 

 “He's doing Trump's bidding to go after those of us who dared to write a report that simply said the Russians tried to influence the election towards Trump,” said Susan Miller, a recently retired veteran CIA officer who, while serving as chief of counterintelligence, was tapped by then-director John Brennan to head a CIA team that drafted the report. “And that’s a crime?” 

IN THIS CONSPIRACY-OBSESSED AGE, the front page headline in Tuesday’s  Washington Post was pure catnip: “Documents Show CIA had connection with JFK’s assassin,” it read. The article, by staff reporter Tom Jackman, went on to claim that "new documents" revealed how a shadowy CIA covert officer oversaw an "operation" that "interacted" with Oswald before the assassination, raising “further questions about the agency’s awareness— or involvement in—the plot to murder the president.”

Oh really? What “plot” are we exactly talking about here? It’s no surprise that explosive claims like that—echoed by many other media outlets—would break through even while the MAGA base was tearing itself apart over the latest Jeffrey Epstein madness. But anybody wondering what this new material actually shows about the assassination of John F. Kennedy is likely to be sorely disappointed. A close reading of the new documents suggests the entire Post article is sleight-of-hand misdirection: There is no evidence of an actual CIA “connection” to Oswald, much less an “operation,” to direct or manipulate him before he alone indisputably shot the president from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository on November 22, 1963. Indeed, it is not even clear that the covert CIA operative at the center of this bogus story—George Joannides, who managed Cuban exile groups as part of the Kennedy White House’s directive to get rid of Fidel Castro and was supposedly the director of this non-existent “operation”—was even aware of Oswald’s existence prior to the assassination.

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SETTLING SCORES: Et voilà! The FBI is now investigating former CIA Director John Brennan for allegedly making false statements to Congress about the Trump-Russia probe. Former FBI Director James Comey is also under investigation for his role in the Russia investigation.

Fox News broke the news Tuesday, reporting that CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a criminal referral about Brennan to Kash Patel. Normally, it’s Justice Department policy not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations. On Wednesday, it did so anyway, in a statement to The Washington Post referencing a “criminal investigation” into Brennan and Comey. So much for policy.

It's an “actuarial certainty,” knowledgeable intelligence sources say, that some people holding security clearances will turn coat and commit treason sometime during their career, or after they’ve left their jobs with plenty of national defense secrets in their heads. The triggering moment, they say, often comes when they feel they’ve been mistreated by their employer.  Like being unfairly fired.

That’s just during normal times. That percentage just got a boost with news of “widespread, abrupt terminations” at the Justice Department and FBI.

“One Justice Department lawyer was suspected of being fired because he used a ‘he/him’ designator in his email signature,” The Washington Post reported Thursday. “People interviewed say they believe another lawyer was ousted because of a message he put on social media. Others told to leave may not mesh with or may be disliked by Trump’s political appointees, the people said. And some are suspected of speaking to the media without authorization.”

The purge is full on at the FBI, where career officials are being strapped up to polygraph machines and queried about their loyalty to Director Kash Patel and his sidekick, rightwing firebrand Dan Bongino.

Since its creation in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency has been America’s premier secret service. Tim Weiner, a former reporter for the New York Times, is no newcomer to this subject.  He began covering the intelligence beat in 1993 and wrote a book in 2007 entitled Legacy of Ashes, a searing criticism of the agency that won the National Book Award.  He has also garnered a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of national security.  

Legacy examined the first six decades of the CIA. The Mission takes up the story for the past 25 years—a roiling torrent of history that includes the 9/11 attacks, America’s “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rising threat (again) of Russia and China and the emergence of the Trump years. 

NSC VACUUM  A report found chaos reigns at Marco Rubio’s slimmed-down National Security Council. Important meetings aren’t held, career staffers are often in the dark about what’s expected of them, and some people or their institutions try to take advantage of power vacuums. (Politico)

SLIMMING THE ODNI: Sen. Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has introduced a bill to overhaul the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.  The Intelligence Community Efficiency and Effectiveness Act would cap the full-time staff at the ODNI at 650—down from roughly 1,600—by eliminating positions and reallocating resources to other agencies.

In Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA, Christina Hillsberg, herself a former covert CIA operations officer, aims to write a “pop history” of women in the spy service. In this, she succeeds. Rather than focus on leadership per se, Hillsberg shines her light on “everyday women of the CIA who were doing extraordinary things.” Covering seven decades from the 1960’s to the 2020’s, she traces the career paths of individual women whose stories illuminate the personal and professional ambitions, challenges, and achievements of women at the agency.