Only Full Transparency Will Save CIA, FBI Now

Only Full Transparency Will Save CIA, FBI Now
Christopher Wray (L), director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Gina Haspel (R), director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), testify on Worldwide Threats during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 29, 2019. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Roger L. Simon
10/5/2020
Updated:
10/6/2020
Commentary
If The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis’s informants are even half-right, CIA Director Gina Haspel is making a big mistake—for herself, for the agency, and, above all, for the country.

Davis wrote: “Haspel is personally blocking the declassification and release of key Russiagate documents in the hopes that President Donald Trump will lose his re-election bid, multiple senior U.S. officials told The Federalist. The officials said Haspel, who served under former CIA Director John Brennan as the spy agency’s station chief in London in 2016 and 2017, is concerned that the declassification and release of documents detailing what the CIA was doing during the 2016 election and the 2017 transition could embarrass the CIA and potentially even implicate Haspel herself.”

What Haspel seems to be missing here is that the CIA, and the FBI, of course, have already been embarrassed, greatly, their reputations tarnished almost beyond recognition with tens of millions of U.S. citizens by the Spygate/Russiagate scandal.

She and FBI Director Christopher Wray, deluding themselves that they are protecting vital institutions of our society, are apparently waiting with the proverbial bated breath for a Biden administration, so that all revelations and potential indictments that might come via John Durham and William Barr are flushed down the equally proverbial memory hole.

It won’t work. The only way to resuscitate those reputations is for Haspel and Wray to be fully transparent, now, before the election.

Even if everything Durham and Barr are investigating is flushed away before reaching fruition, and even if the Biden–Harris administration instantly installs a new attorney general and cleanses the Justice Department and the intelligence agencies of all remnants of the dreaded Trump overnight, tens of millions of Americans already know.

They have already seen at least parts of the story and they won’t forget. How could they?

They would know that their new president, Joe Biden, and many allied with him had been implicated in a treasonous plot of previously unheard of proportions to upend the prior administration.

These same people, these millions, now distrust the CIA and the FBI, and, to a great extent, their government. They consider these pivotal institutions their enemies, working against their interests and, more importantly, the interests of the country. And these people are some of the most deeply patriotic of all Americans.

What a situation for our county! How can we then function as a democratic republic?

Did Haspel think about that? Did Wray consider that as he withholds or endlessly redacts documents, allegedly to protect ... who exactly?

(Wray has taken his desire for a Biden victory to such lengths that he tried to downplay the importance of Antifa.)

Haspel and Wray are doing the reverse of safeguarding their vital institutions. They are increasing public distrust of them, a distrust so great that many of us see our society moving inexorably in the direction of China, a high-tech tyranny of “social credit scores” and obedience to a Big Brother that Orwell could never have conceived.

What is the road back from that?

We should be heartened, however, by reports as Trump was exiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that the president was planning on declassifying and releasing many of these documents himself within days. His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was said to have a briefcase stuffed with them.

Perhaps, by the time you read this, you will know more.

If so, Haspel and Wray, to use another old proverb, will have missed the boat. Everyone will know that their agencies need a thorough house cleaning and it will be done, as it should be, without them.

And I will add, although the media will shout the contrary to the hills, though this is October, revealing these documents is in no way an October Surprise. This is information We the People (remember them?) were owed years ago.

When you have been deliberately deceived, that’s no October Surprise. That’s justice.

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning author, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-founder of PJMedia, and now, a columnist for The Epoch Times. Find him on Parler and Twitter @rogerlsimon. Buy (and enjoy) his books on Amazon.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-founder of PJMedia, and now, columnist for The Epoch Times. His latest book “American Refugees” can be ordered on Amazon. “Roger Simon is among the many refugees fleeing blue state neoliberalism, and he’s written the best account of our generation’s greatest migration.”—Tucker Carlson.
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