Tag: cia

CIA Director Held Covert Moscow Talks With Russian Intel Chiefs As Relations Sink Deeper Into “Crisis”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow on a US Air Force C-17 transport jet on Tuesday morning for meetings with Russian intelligence officials, according to CBS News.

The outlet cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who confirmed Wednesday that Ratcliffe met with senior Russian intelligence officials but not President Vladimir Putin.

Putin was later briefed on the talks, according to Peskov, who cautioned that it was too early to determine whether the meeting could help pull bilateral US-Russian relations out of their “deep crisis.”

The visit marks Ratcliffe’s first known trip to Russia since becoming CIA director, though he has maintained contact with Russian intelligence counterparts, CBS noted.

CBS continued:

Ahead of his trip, the US told Ukrainian officials that a senior delegation would be traveling to Moscow and asked Kyiv to suspend strikes until the delegation’s departure from Russia, according to a senior Ukrainian official.

The secretive trip comes as US-mediated peace talks remain stalled and Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have stoked a refined-products crisis that is spreading worldwide in the form of diesel shortages. We must note the energy crisis has been compounded by tanker transit disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. 

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Report: Trump Admin Requests Ukraine Refrain From Striking Russia During Meetings

The Trump administration reportedly requested that Ukraine refrain from striking parts of Russia with missiles while the United States engaged in meetings with Russian officials.

Christopher Miller, the Chief Ukraine Correspondent for the Financial Times, shared in a post on X that officials in the Trump administration had “requested that Kyiv not strike Moscow, St. Petersburg, and northern regions of Russia with its long range missiles and drones on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when the U.S. would send a plane carrying a senior-level official to the Russian capital,” citing “people familiar with the request.”

“Ukraine agreed, they said,” Miller added. “Today we see that a U.S. Air Force C-17 plane has landed in Moscow.”

Breitbart News’s Oliver JJ Lane reported that a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III was reported to have flown “from the capital of NATO-member Latvia to an airport near Moscow, Russia on Tuesday morning”:

A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III flew from the capital of NATO-member Latvia to an airport near Moscow, Russia on Tuesday morning. The military jet first flew on Sunday from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., reports France’s Le Figaro, citing the open source transponder data which is collected by hobbyist ground-based receivers and aggregated through services such as the Flight Radar app.

Military flights are not obliged to keep their transponders on, but it is best practice to do so for the sake of other flights in the area and air traffic control for the sake of safety. The decision to keep the transponders broadcasting over Russian airspace betrays a desire to make the flight as visible and easily identifiable as possible.

CBS News’s Senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs reported in a post on X that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe was reported to have “traveled to Russia aboard a C-17 for meetings in Moscow today.”

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U.S.-Registered Drone Detected at Site of Suspected CIA Boat Strike

In the hours after a mysterious attack on an Ecuadorian fishing boat near the Galápagos Islands on March 17, a drone registered to U.S. defense contractor Shield AI was hovering just 500 meters from the burning vessel, La Negra Francisca, according to a review of flight tracking data by Drop Site News. This represents the first known vehicle to arrive at the site of the strike.

The unattributed bombing of three Ecuadorian fishing boats in January and March, and the subsequent abduction and torture of 36 fishermen, was first reported by Drop Site in April. Last week, The Washington Post, building on Drop Site’s ongoing investigation, reported that the attacks were part of a covert CIA operation.

According to flight and vessel tracking data from Radar 24 and Global Fishing Watch, the drone was a V-BAT model, primarily used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, but capable of carrying a weapons payload and switching its signal on and off to avoid detection.

The Shield AI drone matches the fishermen’s descriptions of the drones that circled their boats before the bombing, and bears the same red and green lights eyewitnesses reported seeing as they photographed the explosion.

Shield AI did not respond to a request for comment.

The CEO of Shield AI, Brandon Tseng, has publicly stated that the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy are using V-BAT drones “to interdict and destroy billions of dollars’ worth of drugs that were headed for the United States of America.” In 2024, the U.S. Coast Guard signed a $198 million contract with Shield AI for V-BAT drones; in April 2026, Shield AI announced it had received an $800 million contract for V-BAT drones from the U.S. Navy.

No drugs were found on any of the three fishing boats investigated by Drop Site—the Negra Francisca, Don Maca, and Fiorella—all of which were searched and cleared by Ecuadorian coast guard personnel prior to the strikes.

Last month, Drop Site published NASA thermal imagery consistent with an explosion at coordinates 1.5822°N, 87.6958W°, recorded at 1:02 p.m., the time fishermen say they were hit, and in the location where their transponder stopped broadcasting.

Tracking data suggests that the drone launched from a nearby boat on March 17, seven hours after the strike on La Negra Francisca and then circled near the site, its signal disappearing and reappearing. Ascending and descending patterns of movement indicate that the drone may have been landing on a boat and then resuming its flights.

Drop Site previously reported that vessel tracking data showed a U.S. Coast Guard cutter leaving a Galápagos military base a day before the Negra Francisca bombing—despite claiming it only deployed the cutter as a post-incident rescue effort. The Coast Guard vessel’s signal went dark and later appeared in Central American waters 24 hours before the fishermen were placed in El Salvador’s custody.

Video recordings, taken by eyewitnesses to the bombing, show the U.S. Coast Guard patrolling in the aftermath of the airstrike. Drop Site asked the U.S. Coast Guard in June to account for the cutter’s movements after its signal went dark. The Coast Guard responded that it “does not disclose cutter movements during law enforcement missions for operational security.”

In June, the U.S. Coast Guard told The Guardian it deployed its Bertholf cutter for a search-and-rescue operation after receiving a Mayday alert, contradicting prior statements by the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees maritime operations in the Pacific, that it had no knowledge of any U.S. involvement in the incidents. To date, the U.S. Coast Guard has not acknowledged using drones in its purported rescue efforts.

The U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Southern Command, and the Central Intelligence Agency did not respond to questions for this article.

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The Long Road to War

If you’re wondering why the United States and Iran have been bitter antagonists for more than a half century, and why they are now at war, you won’t find the answer in today’s media coverage where the conflict is portrayed as a dispute over terrorism and nuclear weapons. To truly understand what underlies this ongoing conflict you need to look back much further to a history that has been forgotten, or ignored.

Known for most of its history as Persia, Iran is one of the oldest continuous civilizations in the world, with human habitation dating back more than seven millennia.  Despite this foundational history, by the early twentieth century Persia had become a semi-colonial state dominated by British and Russian influence. A rising nationalist movement arose determined to restore the country’s political and economic independence.

The 1953 Coup

A crucial turning point came in 1953. Iranian oil resources had been controlled by the British, who kept most of the vast profits and left little to the Iranians. Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, a popular reformist who resisted foreign domination, took the bold step of nationalizing his country’s oil industry in 1951. In response, the CIA working with British intelligence organized a successful coup that overthrew his government. Although most citizens of the US and UK have little if any knowledge of this event, the 1953 coup and its consequences remain deeply embedded in Iran’s national memory, even today.

The Shah’s Iron Rule

In Mossadegh’s place, they installed a brutal dictatorial regime headed by the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s monarch who ruled the country ruthlessly for the next 26 years. To protect his new-found power, the Shah condemned Mossadegh to three years of solitary confinement, then kept him under house arrest until his death in 1967. In the years following the coup, the Shah and his CIA-trained secret police, Savak, became notorious for their vicious murder, imprisonment and torture of political dissidents. Much of Iranians’ growing hatred of the Shah was focused on the United States, since the Shah was viewed as a puppet of the Americans who put him in power. 

CIA Audacity

The overthrow was considered a resounding success by the CIA, which then became emboldened to undertake a series of regime change operations in other parts of the world. This newfound bravado also influenced America’s decision to undertake its disastrous involvement in the Vietnam War starting in 1954.

A partial list of the countries destabilized and overthrown by the United States following the 1953 coup includes Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964), Chile (1973), and later Panama (1989), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). Regime change is now considered an accepted instrument and goal of US foreign policy. Destabilizing and supporting the overthrow of unfriendly governments has become a central function of the CIA and the State Department. 

The Islamic Revolution

Resistance to the Shah and his totalitarian rule grew over the years, and finally culminated with the Islamic Revolution in January 1979. The Shah was driven into exile, eventually settling in Egypt. His government was replaced by a theocracy headed by the previously exiled religious figure Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who became Iran’s Supreme Leader. Although Khomeini was revered among religious conservatives, he was a ruthless tyrant who executed thousands of political prisoners, often hanging his victims in public from construction cranes for everyone to see. Nonetheless, his anti-Americanism resonated with many Iranians as he stirred up further hatred and a desire for vengeance, calling America the “Great Satan.”

The Embassy Takeover

When the Shah was admitted to the United States for cancer treatment in October 1979, Iranians demanded that he be returned to Iran to face prosecution for his crimes. In a dramatic confrontation in Tehran, an angry crowd besieged the US embassy. A group of militants stormed the embassy and took the American diplomats hostage, outraging American leaders. The Iranians insisted on the Shah’s return as a condition for release of the hostages. President Jimmy Carter refused and the hostages remained captive in Iran for more than a year. Carter would spend the rest of his presidency struggling to find a way to free them. His reelection depended on it.

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CIA-edited Wikipedia has become propaganda tool – co-founder

Wikipedia has become a compromised propaganda tool, the online encyclopedia’s co-founder-turned-critic Larry Sanger has said, warning that its content is now increasingly informing AI.

In an interview with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung published on Friday, Sanger argued that Wikipedia’s lack of an adequate governance structure allowed “specific ideological viewpoints” to shape its content, turning the online encyclopedia into a “globalist, academic, secular and progressive” consensus.

“Wikipedia was recognized early on as an important propaganda organ,” Sanger told the outlet. He argued that while the platform’s anonymity policy makes it difficult to determine who edits its content, “what we know as fact, based on all sorts of evidence, is that the CIA has already edited Wikipedia.”

Evidence of CIA and FBI edits first emerged in 2007 after programmer Virgil Griffith created WikiScanner, a tool linking anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations’ IP addresses. The tool attributed edits to the CIA, FBI, corporations, and government agencies, including changes to Iraq War casualty figures.

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Scandalous! John Thune and Tom Cotton Are Blocking DOJ from Obtaining Brennan Transcripts before US Senate Committees – Impeding Investigation into Former CIA Chief

With friends like John Thune and Tom Cotton — who needs enemies?

John Solomon from Just the News broke the news on Wednesday that Majority Leader John Thune and Senator Tom Cotton are blocking DOJ investigator Joe DiGenova from obtaining the transcripts of John Brennan’s interviews with the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

This is holding up the investigation into Brennan and his role in the deep state coup to take down President Trump in 2016.

Apparently, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refuses to authorize a subpoena to the US Senate to obtain the documents.

What is going on?

John Solomon broke this news earlier on Wednesday on The War Room with Steve Bannon.

John Solomon: I’m going to go back to being a reporter for a second. I do not know this information from anything I’ve gained in government. I can tell you with 100% certainty that Republicans are obstructing the investigation into weaponization. There are two Republicans I can name by name, Senator John Thune and Senator Tom Cotton. They have refused for months, four months now.

The first request came in late January, early February. They are refusing thus far to provide to Joe DiGenova, to the prosecutors in Florida, to the Miami U.S. Attorney, to the Justice Department, the transcripts of John Brennan’s interviews with the Senate Judiciary— Senate Intelligence Committee.

They have refused to do so. I’m gonna call out a third name because I don’t understand the Justice Department’s behavior. When a body that’s separate of the executive branch doesn’t comply, Every other time in American history, go back to Iran-Contra, go back to Watergate, the Justice Department subpoenas the Congress.

For some reason, the acting Attorney General, who wants to be the permanent Attorney General, has not authorized a subpoena to the United States Senate to get those documents.

Those documents will allow the prosecutors in Miami to decide whether the charges are warranted against John Brennan.

The idea that Republican senators will not cooperate with the Republican administration is ridiculous politically, but it’s illegal. It’s obstruction. There ought to be a grand jury subpoena sitting in the Senate clerk’s office, and there ought to be a court case yesterday compelling this because the Justice Department has been delayed by 8 months by 2 Republican senators who have the responsibility and the ability to deliver this.

You want to get to the grand conspiracy case, you need the missing evidence, and the Senate possesses it. And as of this date, I can find no evidence they’ve turned it over, and there is no grand jury subpoena because the clerk of the Senate would have to report it publicly. I just checked the Congressional Record again today. So Todd Blanche, Tom Cotton, John Thune, you got some explaining to do to the War Room posse.

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A Secret Cuban CIA Task Force?

Before I get into this, I just want to say that all of this is coming from anonymous sources. Neither the White House nor the CIA has commented on it, and I can’t independently confirm it. More often than not, anonymously sourced MSM articles on Venezuela and Cuba tend to be false or only have bits of truth sprinkled in, but I felt this topic was worth a mention as we watch the Donald Trump administration work toward a free Cuba. So, take them with a grain of salt. They may or may not be true, but here’s what Politico and the New York Times are reporting this week. 

First up, on Tuesday, Politico reported that the United States has increased its intelligence presence in Cuba in recent months. It claims that it could lead to actions “ranging from a U.S. military operation in Cuba to stepped up efforts to turn Cuban officials or ordinary citizens against the regime.” 

This came from two individuals “familiar with the situation.” Here’s more: 

One of the individuals said the U.S. has recently sent spies and assets to Cuba. The person declined to specify the scope of the increased intelligence collection effort or which U.S. agencies are involved because they didn’t want to risk giving details that could compromise operations. The U.S. has 18 offices and agencies that make up the intelligence community.

The second person described the move as increasing the CIA’s ‘presence’ recently but declined to specify timeframes or who was involved.

Both people were granted anonymity because the topic involves sensitive intelligence.

One person described the move “as a key tactical step that could pave the way for a U.S. military incursion,” but said that nothing is set in stone. The other said that Trump still prefers to work this situation through diplomatically.   

On Wednesday afternoon, the New York Times saw the Politico “increase intelligence presence story” and raised it to a “secret Cuba task force.”    

“The CIA has secretly established a Cuba task force, setting in motion plans for a more concerted campaign to pressure the Cuban government to make the economic, political and leadership changes demanded by President Trump,” the Times reports, according to “people briefed on the action.”

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Report: U.S. expands CIA presence and intelligence operations in Cuba

The United States has increased its intelligence assets in Cuba in recent months, including deploying additional spies and expanding the Central Intelligence Agency’s presence on the island, according to a report published by POLITICO.

Citing “two people familiar” with the Trump administration’s plans, the move is allegedly part of a broader effort to pressure Cuba’s communist government to reform or collapse and could support options ranging from stepped-up efforts to recruit Cuban officials or citizens to a potential U.S. military operation.

The intelligence expansion follows a rare high-level visit to Havana in mid-May 2026 by CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

During the trip, Ratcliffe reportedly met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of Cuban intelligence services.

He personally delivered President Donald Trump’s message that the United States is prepared to engage seriously on economic and security issues only if Cuba makes fundamental changes. The discussions also covered intelligence cooperation, economic stability and security concerns, with emphasis that Cuba can no longer serve as a safe haven for U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China in the Western Hemisphere.

Senior officials accompanied Ratcliffe, with a subsequent report revealing that the delegation included a paramilitary operator involved in the earlier U.S. capture of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

In tandem with the intelligence expansion, Washington significantly intensified aerial surveillance around Cuba starting early this year — flooding the surrounding airspace with P-8 Poseidon maritime patrols, RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance planes and high-altitude MQ-4 drones.

Cuban officials have since criticized the heightened U.S. intelligence and related pressure as “unlawful attempts to destabilize the island.” Nonetheless, Trump administration officials maintain that a stronger intelligence posture is necessary to protect American national security, track foreign adversaries operating in Cuba and maintain leverage as economic conditions deteriorate and diplomatic talks remain stalled.

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CIA Distances Itself From Trump’s Iran War With Media Leak

It seems that CIA and other US intelligence officials hope to distance themselves from Trump’s Iran war, now with the US-initiated conflict having dragged on for nearly five months (with no end in sight), after White House officials had in the opening days touted a swift, limited military excursion. 

They are leaking intelligence to the press which shows they have assessed that current American strikes on Iran are unlikely to change Iran’s negotiating position. With tankers in Hormuz on fire and others too afraid to move, Iran is vowing that it will keep its leverage over the strait at all costs.

The Washington Post report says that “Iran’s government is unlikely to feel significant impact or soften its negotiating position as a result of new rounds of U.S. military strikes like those now underway, according to a new intelligence assessment described by current and former U.S. officials.”

To a large degree this intel assessment is stating the obvious, which should have been well understood far in advance. It seems intel officials want to get it on record that they predict a quagmire as the White House seeks to extricate itself and the global economy from the crisis (of its own making) in the Gulf. Escalation in air strikes will only further stalemate the situation, the intel analysis forecasts. 

Stating the obvious is further on full display in lines from the WaPo report like the following: “Analysts at American spy agencies also have concluded that Tehran and Washington are, for now, stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war, the officials said — an uneasy dynamic given the increasingly deadly nature of the tit-for-tat hostilities between the two nations. The current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the assessments because of their sensitivity.”

President Trump has reportedly been briefed on the assessment. According to more:

The latest intelligence report was written primarily by the CIA, where analysts have underscored the Tehran regime’s staying power despite the loss of many of its top leaders and much of its military hardware to U.S. and Israeli attacks. In May, a CIA analysis concluded that Iran could survive a U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship.

As of Monday, Trump previewed harder hits on Iran to come after the killing of multiple US troops in Jordan and neighboring Iraq. At least two died during a ballistic missile attack in Jordan, while one service member was killed in northern Iraq.

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CIA Report: Venezuela ‘Could Have’ Used Voting Machines To Rig Elections

A newly declassified CIA report says the Venezuelan government “could have” used voting machines to rig elections. President Donald Trump declassified a series of documents and reports related to election integrity on July 16, including a “CIA Note” entitled, “Summary of Select Intelligence Reporting From 2004-2020 on Venezuela’s Electronic Voting Manipulation Capabilities.”

The note says that between 2004 and 2020, “intelligence established that Venezuelan government officials developed sustained interest and likely some capability in manipulating electronic voting systems, including Smartmatic technology, to influence electoral outcomes in Venezuela.” The document says it was produced under the auspices of the CIA’s deputy director of analysis and is dated June 29, 2026.

The CIA produced a baseline assessment of Venezuela’s 2012 presidential election that maintained mass electronic election fraud had not occurred. A 2013 CIA “devil’s advocate” analysis, the note says, provided “plausible scenarios” in which “large-scale electronic manipulation could have occurred in Venezuela’s 2012 election without detection.”

The note summarizes sources reporting that, prior to the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s “intelligence services … worked with the National Electoral Council and Smartmatic to develop plans to manipulate election results using preprogrammed voting machines.” The source or sources of that reporting, however, are censored in the document released Thursday.

The note includes claims that such plans included sending “altered machines” to roughly 300 voting centers in pro-Chavez areas “to ensure victory by approximately 1.5 million votes.” Chavez won that election by roughly 1.6 million votes, according to the note.

“[S]ources reported that Chavez congratulated his team for successfully implementing the manipulation plan,” the report continues. The “devil’s advocate” analysis found that elections in countries that “are clients of the technology provider could be in doubt.” But the CIA assessed that such manipulation did not occur in the 2012 Venezuelan election, because the opposition party conceded loss, the CIA didn’t confirm these possibilities were acted upon, and pre-election polls showed Chavez in the lead.

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