Tag: cia

CIA provided contradictory intel on Hamas during Trump-brokered peace deal, envoys reveal

As U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner worked to secure a historic ceasefire between Israel and Hamas earlier this month, they faced an unexpected obstacle: conflicting intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In a revealing interview with “60 Minutes,” Witkoff disclosed that while mediators from Qatar, Turkey and Egypt assured them Hamas was open to negotiations, the CIA delivered daily briefings insisting the militant group would reject the deal. The discrepancy raises critical questions about the reliability of U.S. intelligence and its role in high-stakes diplomacy.

The Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan faced skepticism from regional players and international observers. Yet Kushner and Witkoff, leveraging personal relationships with Arab leaders, believed Hamas could be persuaded to accept key concessions—including a hostage release and ceasefire.

According to Witkoff, while Qatar’s emir, Turkey’s president and Egypt’s leadership privately signaled Hamas’ willingness to engage, the CIA’s assessments painted a starkly different picture.

“We were getting, because of our relationships… we were hearing that Hamas was positive on the deal,” Witkoff told “60 Minutes.” “And yet I was reading intelligence reports every day and getting briefings from the CIA three times a day and those intelligence briefings were suggesting that Hamas was going to say no.”

The contradiction forced Kushner and Witkoff to make a crucial judgment call: trust their diplomatic sources or defer to the CIA’s warnings.

Did the CIA mislead or misinterpret?

The White House defended the intelligence community’s role, with an official telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided “critical support” throughout negotiations.

“It is the responsibility of the intelligence community to provide full scopes of assessments to the negotiating team to ensure they have the full range of information and can achieve the best possible outcome—as they did,” the official said.

But according to BrightU.AI‘s Enoch, Witkoff’s account suggests the CIA’s assessments may have been flawed—or deliberately skewed. The implications extend beyond Hamas, reinforcing long-standing concerns about intelligence politicization, particularly regarding Russia, Iran and other geopolitical flashpoints.

A pattern of distrust in U.S. intelligence

This incident adds to a growing list of credibility issues surrounding U.S. intelligence agencies. President Donald Trump famously clashed with the CIA, accusing it of undermining his policies. Sens. Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard have also voiced skepticism about intelligence assessments on Russia and Syria.

The Hamas episode underscores a recurring dilemma: when intelligence contradicts firsthand diplomatic feedback, which should policymakers trust?

Ultimately, Kushner and Witkoff’s gamble paid off. Hamas accepted the ceasefire, freeing hostages and opening the door to further negotiations. But the revelation that the CIA’s intelligence directly contradicted mediators’ assurances raises troubling questions. Was the CIA misinformed—or was it pushing an agenda? And if intelligence agencies can be so wrong on Hamas, how reliable are their assessments on Iran, Russia or China?

For now, the Trump administration celebrates a rare diplomatic victory. But the deeper lesson may be that in an era of intelligence wars and geopolitical deception, sometimes the best intelligence comes not from classified briefings—but from trusted allies on the ground.

As the U.S. navigates future conflicts, the balance between intelligence analysis and real-world diplomacy will remain fraught. The Hamas case serves as a stark reminder that truth in foreign policy is often elusive—and sometimes, the most reliable intelligence comes from those who refuse to take “official assessments” at face value.

Watch the video below where Trump was lauded for the historic peace deal in Gaza.

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CIA tried to recruit Winston Churchill – Telegraph

The CIA tried to recruit British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill to spread propaganda broadcasts on the agency-backed Radio Liberty in the 1950s, in an effort to undermine the Soviet Union, The Telegraph has reported.

At the height of the Cold War, the CIA-funded radio station targeted the Soviet Union with propaganda broadcasts, while its sister organization, Radio Free Europe, focused on Moscow’s allies. Both were covertly controlled and funded by the US intelligence agency until 1972 and merged into RFE/RL four years later.

In 1958, Radio Liberty’s controllers suggested riding the wave of “revisionism” gripping the Soviet Union at the time, and taking advantage of emerging ideological divisions within Marxism-Leninism to undermine the government, The Telegraph wrote on Saturday, citing declassified CIA documents.

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House Judiciary Chair Refers Ex-CIA Director John Brennan for Criminal Prosecution

Republicans who lead the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday referred former CIA Director John Brennan to Attorney General Pam Bondi for criminal prosecution in connection with an investigation in 2016 into alleged Russian–Trump collusion.

The chairman of the panel, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), wrote in a letter that Brennan allegedly “knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview” in May 2023 with the House Judiciary Committee, and that he provided “numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact” during his testimony.

As an example, the letter said that Brennan, who had served as CIA director under President Barack Obama, had denied that the intelligence agency used the “Steele dossier” in coming up with a post-election assessment following Donald Trump’s first presidential win in 2016. The reference is to a collection of documents and claims that were put together by former UK intelligence official Christopher Steele.

Used as Democratic-funded opposition research against Trump in 2016, the dossier has long been discredited as false by Republicans as well as by former special counsel John Durham. In a report released in 2023, Durham said that FBI investigators did not corroborate a “single substantive allegation” in the dossier, even though it was continually cited in warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil former Trump aide Carter Page.

According to Jordan’s Oct. 21 letter to Bondi, Brennan told lawmakers that he wasn’t involved in analyzing the Steele dossier and that he only saw it after the 2016 election. Jordan said that Brennan’s statement to Congress about the CIA not being involved was false.

“I said the first time I actually saw it, it was after the election. And the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier. You can direct that to the FBI and to others,” Brennan had testified before the lawmakers, according to the letter.

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Judicial Watch Sues CIA for Jeffrey Epstein Records

Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for records involving any role Jeffrey Epstein might have played in connection with the agency, his business dealings, travel, victim or witness information, and records concerning his death (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Central Intelligence Agency (No. 1:25-cv-03618)).

Judicial Watch filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the CIA failed to respond to a July 9, 2025, FOIA request for:

  • Intelligence activities and connections, including any records indicating whether Epstein was ever an asset for any U.S. or foreign intelligence agency and/or reports analyzing his potential connections to foreign intelligence services.
  • Financial and business activities, including analyses concerning Epstein’s wealth accumulation, estimated at approximately $560 million at the time of his 2019 arrest.
  • Associations and networks, including records documenting Epstein’s interactions with high-profile executives, royalty, or other prominent figures, where such interactions were of interest to the CIA due to national security concerns. Also, records about his so-called “Black Book” or contact lists, as well as his properties that may have been referenced in CIA reports.
  • Criminal investigations and legal proceedings, including records about coordination with other federal agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Justice (DOJ), or U.S. Marshals Service, regarding Epstein’s criminal activities. Also, records about his death in 2019 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
  • Surveillance and evidence collection.
  • Foreign connections and travel.
  • Victim and witness information.

 In May 2023, Epstein was reported to have met “dozens of times” with former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak between 2013-2017. Epstein reportedly donated $110,000 to former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers wife’s online poetry project in 2016 and held meetings with many other high profile individuals “long after he was a registered sex offender. He had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.”

Attorney General Pamela Bondi released a long-awaitedtrove of documents related to Epstein in February 2025, but “the much-hyped, roughly 200-page document dump provided no big revelations, instead listing celebrities and politicians who were already known to have palled around with the notorious pedophile.”

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Siege of Venezuela Escalates With Strategic Bombers Over the Caribbean, as Trump Administration Reportedly Unleashes CIA Covert Operations on Venezuela, Including Lethal Action

The conflict is in the air, in the sea, and in the shadows.

Today (15) was an eventful day in the Caribbean Sea, where the Naval siege on Venezuela keeps a steady pressure on the Socialist country.

During the morning, three United States Air Force B-52H Strategic Bombers were spotted over International Waters off the coast of Venezuela.

U.S. BOMBERS FLEX NUCLEAR MUSCLE NEAR VENEZUELA

In a sky-shattering flex that screams regime-crushing thunder, 2 USAF B-52H Stratofortress behemoths blitzed the southern Caribbean just 100~240 miles from Caracas.

“In a sky-shattering flex that screams regime-crushing thunder, 2 USAF B-52H Stratofortress behemoths blitzed the southern Caribbean just 100~240 miles from Caracas. They orbited for hours in a blatant missile drill that has Maduro’s dictatorship sweating apocalypse. Venezuelan F-16s scrambled like cornered rats, echoes of Trump’s anti-narco hammer.

Launched from Barksdale AFB with a shadowy tagalong, the 60-year-old nuclear titans, modded for cruise-missile hellfire, ghosted over Cuba and Mexico before locking onto Venezuela’s coast. They vanished in transponder blackouts that screamed stealth strike simulations, only to resurface gunning south in loops off La Orchila military isle.

The flight drew 5,000 trackers and ignited global panic as Caracas screamed ‘provocation!’ The Pentagon stonewalls it as ‘routine training’, but insiders whisper Trump’s lethal boat strikes, 5 dead last week, 6 this month, are escalating the shadow war.

The B-52s’ 1,600-mile AGM-86 Armageddon range puts Maduro’s palace squarely in the crosshairs.”

That led Caracas to scramble F-16s from El Libertador Air Base to respond to US B-52 bombers’ presence.

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Slain Journalist Was on Threshold of Exposing Large-Scale CIA-Mafia Drug-Smuggling Operation Using Australian Bank Founded by Special Forces Veteran

n August 10, 1991, Danny Casolaro was found lying dead in a tub of bloody water in a hotel room in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

The cause of death was ruled a suicide, the view presented in a recent Emmy winning Netflix series. However, the crime scene evidence makes clear that Casolaro was murdered.

Prior to his death, Casolaro had been investigating the nefarious activities of a corrupt cabal in the CIA linked to then-President George H.W. Bush and was planning to publish a tell-all book called “The Octopus.”

One of the key chapters was going to focus on a drug and arms-smuggling operation using the Australian-based Nugan Hand Bank, which was founded in 1973 and staffed by people with military backgrounds and who had links at a high level with American intelligence operations.[1]

Nugan Hand made its money by charging high fees for performing illegal and shady services (including moving money overseas, flouting Australia’s and other countries’ laws, and tax avoidance schemes) and from the fraudulent procurement and subsequent misappropriation of investments from the public.[2]

CIA whistleblower Victor Marchetti wrote that Nugan Hand’s favors for the CIA included providing cover for operators, laundering money, and establishing cutouts for clandestine activity the Agency did not want to be publicly identified with—including gun running to apartheid South Africa and Southern Rhodesia in violation of arms embargos.[3]

Casolaro had been planning a trip to Australia to interview key figures associated with the bank, including Bernie Houghton, a top CIA man from Texas who joined Nugan Hand’s staff in 1978 and established its Saudi Arabian branch.[4]

An Air Force cadet in World War II who flew opium out of the Golden Triangle in C-47 cargo planes during the Vietnam War, Houghton had established the Bourbon & Beefsteak, a gathering place for U.S. soldiers on R&R from Vietnam, whose private guests included Sydney mob boss Abe Saffron and John D. Walker, the CIA’s Australian Station Chief from 1973 to 1975.[5]

Besides Houghton, Casolaro hoped to interview members of an Australian parliamentary commission that had investigated the Nugan Hand Bank and helped expose its criminal activities. Casolaro further intended to interview Nugan Hand Bank co-founder Michael Jon Hand, a decorated Green Beret in Vietnam and CIA contract agent who trained hill tribesmen in Vietnam and Laos and fled Australia after the Nugan Hand Bank’s collapse in January 1980.[6]

Already, Casolaro had amassed significant evidence of Nugan Hand’s function as a beachhead for drug and money-laundering operations run by Mafia-connected CIA operatives who were part of President George H.W. Bush’s “secret team.”

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President Trump Authorizes CIA To Conduct Lethal Covert Action in Venezuela

The Trump administration has authorized the CIA to take covert action inside Venezuela, including lethal operations, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, as the administration’s push toward regime change heats up.

President Trump later confirmed that he authorized the covert action and said the US was considering attacks on Venezuelan territory. “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” he said.

US officials told the Times that the authority allows the CIA to take action against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro or his government, either unilaterally or in conjunction with the US military. The report said it is not known whether the CIA is currently planning operations inside Venezuela or if the authority will be used for future plans.

The US military has been drawing up plans to launch strikes on Venezuelan territory and potentially capture strategic ports and airfields, actions that would almost certainly lead to a full-blown war. The US military campaign in the region has so far involved a buildup of warships and about 10,000 US troops in the Caribbean and strikes on five boats that the US has claimed, without providing evidence, were running drugs.

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Trump demands investigation into ‘Ukraine impeachment scam’

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he hopes the “necessary authorities” are looking into Democratic Senator Adam Schiff for being “dishonest and corrupt.” The California lawmaker led two investigations into Trump in 2019 and 2021.

During Trump’s first term, House Democrats impeached him twice – first in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and again in January 2021 for incitement of insurrection following the January 6 Capitol riot. Back then, Schiff was a member of the House of Representatives that investigated the cases.

“The Ukraine Impeachment (of me!) Scam was a far bigger Illegal Hoax than Watergate. I sincerely hope the necessary authorities, including CONGRESS, are looking into this!” Trump wrote on social media.

Kremlin investment aide Kirill Dmitriev has called the US president’s statement important, adding that “Ukraine also hid [ex-President Joe] Biden’s corruption and campaigned” against Trump and his vice president, J.D. Vance.

Dmitriev recently said that Biden provoked the Ukraine conflict to hide his family’s corrupt dealings, commenting on a set of CIA documents declassified by the agency’s director, John Ratcliffe. According to those, in 2016 Biden asked the CIA to cover up a report about his family’s alleged business dealings in Ukraine.

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Declassified: MI6 Support For Nazi ‘Forest Brothers’

September 22nd marked “Resistance Fighting Day”. It was on this date in 1944 anti-Communist guerrilla forces in Estonia declared war on the Soviet Union’s ‘occupation’ of their state. Parallel paramilitary factions rapidly formed in neighbouring Latvia and Lithuania. For over a decade, these violent factions – popularly known as the Forest Brothers – waged a brutal, ill-fated insurgency against Soviet authorities. They remain venerated in the region and beyond today as courageous freedom fighters, immortalised by commemorative monuments, street names and statues throughout the Baltic states.

In reality, the vast majority of the tens of thousands of Forest Brothers were Holocaust perpetrators and Nazi collaborators. In many cases, militants joined the movement due to fear of prosecution and punishment for their activities during World War II. While waging their anti-Soviet crusade, the Brothers also murdered thousands of innocent civilians, including many children. However, critical scrutiny of the Forest Brothers’ genocidal legacy is criminalised throughout the Baltics. Academics, journalists and lawyers have been jailed for exposing the truth.

The same legislation moreover prohibits any public discussion of how the Jewish populations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were slaughtered in their virtual totality, largely before the Wehrmacht arrived in June 1941 under Operation Barbarossa. Western powers are aggressively complicit in this historical coverup. In July 2017, NATO produced a slick propaganda film heroising the Forest Brothers. Meanwhile, mainstream pundits routinely whitewash Baltic Nazi collaboration, on the risible basis local populations simply sought to resist Communist rule.

There is another core component of the Forest Brothers’ history their advocates at home and abroad are keen to conceal. Namely, the Baltic Nazi guerrilla war was covertly supported financially, materially and practically by MI6. Britain’s foreign spying agency assisted their attempted insurrection by supplying explosives and weapons, infiltrating and exfiltrating agents, and sponsoring assassinations and sabotage attacks. Yet, MI6 records documenting this dark alliance are unforthcoming. Evidence of London’s cloak-and-dagger assistance to the Forest Brothers is provided largely by declassified CIA files.

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COLD WAR DISINFORMATION & ASSASSINATIONS by CIA in the GLOBAL SOUTH. Operation Colombo, Killing of Chile’s Allende and Ceylon’s Bandaranaike

September saw anniversaries in the chilling deaths of two democratically elected Socialist heads of state during the United States’ led Cold War anti-communist crusade that unfolded across the world between 1948-91:

The first assassination of concern here happened in Colombo, the capital of the geostrategic Indian Ocean island of Ceylon on September 25, 1959. The second death happened half way across the world fourteen years after the assassination of South Asia’s first Socialist Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike.

On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende, South America’s first Socialist head of state died during a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), backed coup as military helicopters strafed the Presidential Palace in Santiago de Chile. The campaign of murder, suppression and disinformation against the Left that followed Allende’s death was Code Named “Operation Colombo”.

Both deaths of democratically elected Socialist heads of State were Cold War operations, which sent shock waves around the world at the time.

Both Bandaranaike and Allende, had promised to fully de-colonize and nationalize their countries’ plantations, ports, minerals and mines to benefit their native peoples, rather than foreign corporations drawing profits from the resource wealth of Global South countries. Both Bandaranaike and Allende died three years into their terms in office before they were able to deliver on the promise of full Economic independence for their citizens.

Remarkably, Prime Minister Bandaranaike was killed minutes after the US Ambassador, Bernard Gufler, had visited him in Colombo. Details of Gufler’s brief visit to Bandaranaike and departure from the scene of the crime just minutes before the assassination were revealed in de-classified US State department documents, some published on Wikileaks and corroborated by British intelligence source reports.

The narrative that a Buddhist monk had shot the Prime Minister compounded the shock, horror and grief that engulfed the British Dominion of Ceylon which had received faux independence just 9 years earlier in February 1948.

US Ambassador Guffler’s profile is of interest here. He was a Special Ambassador and a veteran of GLADIO, the clandestine NATO and CIA ‘stay behind’ secret operations network in Europe, established after World War 2 in partnership with British intelligence.

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