How The CIA Became The Greatest Threat To US Security | Ray McGovern

## The intelligence house that ate its purpose Intelligence is supposed to reduce uncertainty for those who must make consequential choices. Yet the exchange recorded in this conversation traces how the very machinery designed to keep a president informed has been hollowed out—first by ideology, then by careerism, and finally by a culture that learned to tell leaders what they wanted to hear. The result, as Ray McGovern emphasizes from long personal experience, is not merely bureaucratic decay but a national-security hazard: a once-credible President’s Daily Brief and an entire analytic ecosystem transformed into instruments of reassurance or affirmation rather than sober assessment. ## From one-on-one truth-telling to managed narratives Ray McGovern’s recollections of briefing presidents in person capture an institutional ideal: a small, disciplined analytic team preparing a concise daily product precisely tailored to the president’s needs. In that model, the intelligence process began with the president’s questions, fed collection, produced analysis, and then conveyed it directly to the decisionmaker. The PDB—presented at the most human, intimate level—was designed to cut through layers of bureaucracy and get facts and options into the Oval Office. But over decades, that intimacy with the president frayed. The recorded discussion shows how intermediate actors, political appointees, and power brokers gradually inserted themselves between analysts and principals. Instead of briefing that sought to challenge preconceptions, the product increasingly reflected the preferences of those in authority. The PDB became less a candid companion for the president and more a performance delivered for domestic or intra-administration consumption. Where once an analyst could answer uncomfortable questions directly, later iterations of the system favored harmonized messaging that conformed to what leaders or factions wanted to hear. ## How individuals and incentives reshape institutions A central theme in the conversation is how individual character and ambition change organizational logic. McGovern names several players—some lauded for skill, others for their facility with patronage and loyalty—and shows how personnel decisions compound over time. When agency leaders prioritize allegiance, ideological conformity, or operational swagger over rigorous analysis, they cartelize the institution’s outputs. Ambitious managers who rise because they can "salute" rather than because they can substantively assess foreign actors will, in turn, staff their teams with pliable deputies. Over one generation, this becomes a powerful mechanism for intellectual capture. The result is predictable: analytic cadres trained to avoid surprising senior officials; managers who edit or suppress uncomfortable conclusions; and an appetite for confident, politically convenient narratives. McGovern’s account of figures who moved from agency roles into the White House underscores the porous boundary between operational opportunism and analytic work. Where the analyst’s job is to report doubt and uncertainty, an operator’s instinct is to shape events and expectations—two logics that do not coexist easily within the same institution. ## Two cautionary case studies: Iraq and Ukraine Concrete episodes make these institutional dynamics dangerous. The conversation recalls the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when intelligence assessments about weapons of mass destruction were presented with an unbefitting certainty. McGovern points to a culture in which senior officials—eager, anxious, or ideologically committed—broadcast a "slam dunk" that justified war. When analysts are under pressure to produce certainty, the product ceases to be intelligence and becomes advocacy. The consequences were catastrophic: a costly war premised on assessments that later proved erroneous. More recently, the narrative about Russia’s performance in Ukraine illustrates how wishful thinking can become official doctrine. Public declarations—from agency heads and the director of national intelligence—that Russia was losing and running out of ammunition did not sit well with observers who had closer views of the battlefield. The conversation highlights how those public judgments were plausibly influenced by high-level meetings, personal impressions, and a desire to bolster allies’ confidence. When officials repeat optimistic assessments—whether because they have been reassured by partners or because the administration prefers them—the intelligence community loses credibility and can inadvertently shape policy in dangerous ways. Misreading the balance of forces in a major conventional conflict carries geopolitical and, at the extreme, nuclear risks. ## Institutional design, loyalty, and the erosion of professional norms Beyond personalities, the exchange explores how institutional design and norms change the production of intelligence. The PDB’s original value depended on norms: candor, nonpartisanship, and discipline. As those norms weaken, the incentives favor products that flatter. McGovern’s reflections emphasize two structural vulnerabilities: first, the centralization of certain analytic products under political appointees who may lack deep analytic experience; second, the rotation of operational or legal specialists into analytic or leadership roles without meaningful training in analytic tradecraft. These changes erode the separation between political advocacy and professional judgment. An analyst who knows that a certain line will win favor—or whose promotion depends on not rocking the boat—will learn to couch conclusions in language that avoids conflict. Over time, that behavior becomes standard operating procedure. The conversation warns that such normalization transforms the intelligence community from a reality-check to a political armature, subordinating the rigorous handling of uncertainty to the maintenance of narratives. ## Rebuilding credibility: people, processes, and the presidency If the problem is a mixture of personnel choices, career incentives, and cultural drift, the remedy must be multileveled. McGovern expresses guarded hope that appointments rooted in analytic experience and independence could help restore the health of the PDB and the broader analytic ecosystem. The fix begins with leadership that values blunt truth over reassurance—and it extends to rebuilding the norms and practices that rewarded craftsmanship: rigorous sourcing, documented caveats, and a willingness to present competing hypotheses. Restoration requires both structural and behavioral reforms. Structurally, agencies need transparent mechanisms to protect analysts from political interference—clear delineations between collectors, operators, and analysts, with protections for dissent and minority reports. Behaviorally, leaders must reward accuracy and intellectual courage rather than rhetorical loyalty. The presidency plays an outsized role: a leader who solicits and welcomes unwelcome truths will create the demand that drives more honest analysis. Conversely, a disposition that prefers cheerleading will continue to starve the system of corrective feedback. ## Why the stakes are national and existential The stakes of analytic credibility are more than institutional pride; they are strategic reality. When intelligence misreads the balance in a major conflict, it can produce escalation, miscalculation, and wrong choices about the use of force. The conversation repeatedly ties the decay of analytic rigor to specific policy harms—unnecessary wars, misallocated resources, and heightened risk of unintended consequences. In the nuclear era, where misperception can set off irreversible chains, the cost of analytical error multiplies. That is why McGovern’s alarm is not nostalgia. He does not simply miss an older way of doing business; he highlights the real-world consequences when an intelligence community becomes cap

How The CIA Became The Greatest Threat To US Security | Ray McGovern [Part 1 of 3] Veteran CIA analyst and political activist, Ray McGovern spills the beans of how the intelligence community transformed from informing the president of the USA about what's going on in the world to a house of lies interested in its own affairs more than in preventing global nuclear armageddon. Ray McGovern online: https://raymcgovern.com Neutrality Studies is on Spotify and Apple Podcasts now! You can follow us here: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ch/podcast /neutrality-studies/id1791051233 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vvTf44yckVz1hDggVolgB? si=03305b3fe8ad4cf3 #M3 You know, I was so close to all that. And to see that thing dismantled and corrupted in an area that really matters, you know, I just hope that Tulsi Gabbard, when she comes in, can repair this against all the odds. I briefed her in the past when she was a member of the House. She is super smart. #M2 Hello, everybody. This is Pascal from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm again joined by Ray McGovern. Ray was an analyst for the CIA for 27 years, being, among other things, responsible for preparing the President's Daily Brief. He's now part of the activist group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. And today we want to discuss the role of intelligence in presidential decisions, of which, honestly, we've seen a lot one way or another in the last two weeks of the Trump presidency. Ray, welcome. #M3 Thank you, Pascal. Thank you for having me. #M2 Very glad to have you with me because you are one of the people who actually was responsible for briefing the president on things that are happening. And we've seen so many executive orders from the new president, Donald J. Trump, that I'm really wondering on what basis he is making decisions now. Because his pick for the intelligence organizations is not yet confirmed. Tulsi Gabbard is not yet confirmed. At the moment, who is briefing the president on what's happening in the world? #M3 -- 1 of 10 -- John Ratcliffe has been confirmed, and he's the new director of the CIA. Organizationally, he, at least notionally, reports to the Director of National Intelligence, who it looks very much like will be Tulsi Gabbard. She emerged from committee nine to eight on a straight party vote. But that means probably that the full Senate will confirm her as the next Director of National Intelligence. That is of supreme importance because it is she, the Director of National Intelligence, who has purview over all very important analytical products, including, first and foremost, the President's Daily Brief. Now, as you mentioned, I had a role in the PDB. Actually, I started preparing it. I wasn't alone, of course. There was a small group, for Nixon and then for Ford. And then a very curious thing happened with respect to Reagan. With Nixon and Ford, we pretty much took great care to make sure that we wrote what we intended to say. But then we had to send it down to this fellow named Henry Kissinger. And of course, Henry Kissinger knew everything about everything. And so word came back that he used to sort of tear out this article, tear out that one, or make notes: "These people don't know what they're talking about. Now, let me tell you about it." The word is we never got to see the president. Okay? Never. We did all this work. We never got to brief him. Okay? Until Reagan came in. Now, a couple of my supervisors at the time—I was relatively junior—when they heard that Ronald Reagan had won the nomination, they said, "Wow, wow. He doesn't know much about foreign policy." Let's go out and brief him with the President's Daily Brief. So we all asked Admiral Turner, who was our head of the CIA at the time. He said, that's a great idea. Of course, you should do that. And then we asked the President. He said, yeah, the current President. Yeah. So we went out there. Now, when I say we, it was two of my former buddies. Okay. So they go to the Pacific Palisades, show up in the morning at 7:15, and meet the Secret Service. Secret Service, who are you? CIA. Morning briefing for the President. Well, we don't have any word about this. What's going on here? CIA. And then just by happenstance, Reagan comes down in his bathrobe and pajamas to have some breakfast. What's going on out there? CIA briefing, sir. Oh, okay. Come on in. Ha, ha, ha. That was it. That was it. He loved it. We had two pretty senior people who had been around a while and could tell the truth and knew how to brief people. Reagan loved it. They alternated one week, another week. And we were on the staff supporting them, of course. Long story short, they get to Washington. Reagan is inaugurated. And George H.W. Bush, his vice president, who really knew about all this and wanted to be briefed himself, says, now that you're president, Mr. President, how would you like to handle the President's Daily Brief? You know, I thought I would like to see it too. And probably the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, they probably should see it too. So what time do you want to be briefed? And Ronald Reagan says, well, you know, those early mornings are pretty rigorous. So I'll tell you what. Why don't you guys get the personal one-on-one briefings and come see me at 11:30? I'll be ready to go then, and you can tell me what to think, what they said. Well, that's the way it went down, okay? So on any given day, I worked on a team of two. On any given morning, 7:30, 8:30, 9: -- 2 of 10 -- 00, I would brief some assortment of the Vice President, Bush, Secretary of State, mostly Shultz, Secretary of Defense Weinberger, the Vice President I mentioned, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom we added later, with the President's approval, of course, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. One-on-one. It was the most heady, the halcyon days for me as an experienced PDB briefer to be trusted to go down there and brief these people one-on-one, answer their questions to the extent I could, and find the answers to the extent I couldn't, and get them right back to these people. It was an incredible cog in the intelligence process. Some of your audience probably need to be refreshed that the intelligence process starts with collection requirements. What does the president need to know? And then they're translated to collectors to collect this information. And then if it's fancy stuff, technological stuff, it needs to be processed. Or if it's substantive stuff, it needs to be analyzed. And then it needs to be disseminated to policymakers. This was the first time in the history of the President's Daily Brief that it was disseminated to the policymakers one-on-one, 7:30, 8 o'clock in the morning by one experienced analyst, and I happened to have the privilege of doing that for four years during the first term of Ronald Reagan. It was terrific, okay? Now, what happened? Well, by and by, it became, well... There was a fellow who actually worked for me in the early '70s. His name, you may know it, is Robert M. Gates. And he was smart enough. Oh, he was very smart. But he was so ambitious that he was a problem in my branch. And so I pointed that out to him in his fitness report. He didn't really like that. Anyhow, long story short, he gets sent down to the White House to work for Brzezinski. Casey is down there. And when this October surprise happened, when Jimmy Carter couldn't get the hostages out, we know now from a new book out—I don't have it in front of me— Craig Unger is the name of the author, that Gates and Casey played a role in postponing the decision by the Iranians to release the hostages until after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. So, there's a fellow who's not really an intelligence officer; he's an operator. And when he sensed that Mr. Casey thought that the Russians were behind every untoward thing in the world, like Nicaragua or Angola or whatever. Okay. He said, yes, sir, Mr. Casey. And long story short, he brought up a résumé of people who were not very accomplished substantively, but they certainly knew how to salute. Gates himself was a windsock, and they became windsocks, to witness the fact that on December 21st, 2002, just three months before the invasion of Iraq, George Tenet, a direct descendant from Bobby Gates as head of the CIA, and John McLaughlin, one of his deputies, briefed Bush and Cheney, the younger Bush, about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And their briefing was not factual, but it was also not very persuasive in saying they were there, that that was the weapons of mass destruction. So Cheney says, is that all you got? And McLaughlin's face turns red because he was briefing it, but Tenet jumps off the couch and he says, Mr. President, it's a slam dunk. It's a slam dunk. Now, for those of you who don't know basketball, that's when you're a really big guy, you know, and there's -- 3 of 10 -- this basketball right there. Slam dunk. Okay. How do we know this? Well, Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, who was there, told the New York Times, it's not my fault. George Tenet jumped off the couch and said, slam dunk. Now, I can go a little further on it. Maybe I will before I leave the slam dunk. The head of national intelligence under Obama and Biden, his name was James Clapper. When there was a sarin attack, poison gas in Syria, everyone and his brother was saying the Syrians did it. Bashar al-Assad did it. It was terrible. We have to make war on Syria. Clapper comes into the White House unannounced and asks to speak to the president, and does, and he said, now, Mr. President, John Kerry is a wonderful fellow, and he knew how to drive those boats up there off the Mekong, a brave man, but he doesn't know much about intelligence. He says, actually, he said 35 times, just two days ago, that Bashar al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad did this thing outside of Damascus, the sarin attack. I don't know how to say this, Mr. President, but... Let me put it this way. It's not a slam dunk. It's not a slam dunk. How do I know that? Obama told his unofficial biographer, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, the year before Obama went into the Western sunset. So these things are consequential. Let me go back to the PDB. Who runs the PDB now? The Director of National Intelligence. So it was Clapper. Okay. And then it became this Avril Haines with no background in intelligence at all. She was a lawyer, and she was scooped up by John Brennan, head of the CIA, because he loved what she could do with the laws and the regulations. So he was very happy to have her as his deputy for a couple of months until later. Until John Brennan sent some of his thugs in to access the Senate Intelligence Committee computers. They were investigating torture, and John Brennan was deeply involved in all that. He wanted to know what the Senate Intelligence Committee had as they put together their report. So they hacked into the Senate Committee computers. Why do I mention this? Well, Avril Haines all of a sudden was transferred from the CIA to the National Security Council. And they needed somebody to investigate this rather untoward event where one branch of government is hacking into the other. And so they picked Avril Haines, okay? She did a wonderful job. She said, oh, just a big mistake. Nobody, no, don't hold, this was, you know, forget about it, forget about it. So this is the kind of clerk that ends up as the head of national intelligence under Biden. Now, why I mention that, because if you look at Iraq, the invasion of Ukraine happened at the end of February 2022. Now, at the end of 2022, Avril Haines said publicly, and I'm sure she told the president herself, look, good news. Russians are running out of ammunition. They have no indigenous capabilities to produce the ammunition that they're leaving helter-skelter on the field before the Ukrainian forces. So take heart. This looks really good. And w