Intelligence Meltdown
Intelligence Meltdown
By Todd Strandberg
No other nation on earth spends more money on intelligence agencies than the United States. The Department of Homeland Security and its related departments boast a budget of $80 billion; which is more than what Russia spends on its entire military.
The current state of our intelligence gathering can only be described as total chaos. The CIA is riddled with people who constantly leak information for economic or political gain. The Russians and Chinese have broken into most key databases. (The personal information of 40 million people was stolen under Obama’s watch.)
Today, a foreign national has virtually signed his own death warrant whenever he provides secret information to the U.S. The New York Times recently reported that our spying operations in China have been systematically dismantled by the killing or imprisoning of more than a dozen sources. It will now take us decades to restore confidence in the CIA.
Beijing is obviously proud of its intelligence triumph. China’s Global Times, gave a “Thank you comrades” reply to the NYT article when it said in an editorial that, if the report was true, it was a victory for China. The paper stated:
“If this article is telling the truth, we would like to applaud China’s anti-espionage activities. Not only was the CIA’s spy network dismantled, but Washington had no idea what happened and which part of the spy network had gone wrong.”
Some people think that a mole within the CIA has betrayed the United States. Others believe that the Chinese hacked the covert system used to communicate with its foreign sources. Our spy agencies have so many problems we may never know what went wrong.
Our allies are quickly learning that we cannot be trusted with any amount of sensitive information. After the Islamic terrorist bombing in Manchester, the American media leaked the number of dead, the name of the bomber, and the country he last visited. The UK’s home secretary rebuked the U.S. for leaking information that was vital to the ongoing investigation.
The liberal media is a huge part of the problem. The press is hypocritical about the leaking of classified information. The Washington Post condemned President Trump for divulging secrets to the Russia, while at the same time it cited Israel as a source of information about ISIS trying to use laptops to smuggle bombs onto airplanes.
Where in the Constitution or U.S. law did the press get the right to reveal state secrets which every U.S. citizen is duty bound to protect? If during the World War II era we had the same problem with intelligence leaks as we have today, all the papers on the eve of D-Day would have screamed, “We’re Going Ashore at Normandy.”
The damage from faulty intelligence is not always easy to spot. It’s not until we realize that China’s new stealth fighter looks a lot like ours that it becomes clear that our secrets are leaking out.
The quickest way to fix our intelligence problem is to severely punish anyone who is found to have shared classified information. If a dozen people get the electric chair or life in prison, the leaks will quickly dry up.
The only thing positive about these agencies is that they produce such a large amount of information that the Russians and Chinese have to spend vast amounts of time sorting through this data to find something useful.
I see little chance of reform coming to the intelligence services. Just like the military industrial complex, a government agency only grows in size. But the intelligence industrial complex is more dangerous because it will come after our liberties.
The National Security Agency under former President Barack Hussein Obama routinely violated the rights of Americans. Thanks to some of the leaked top-secret documents, some of the most serious constitutional abuses by the U.S. intelligence community are only now being revealed.
By the time our intelligence agencies straighten out their problems, these same agencies will likely be used to aid the Antichrist in creating his one world police state. The good news for all believers is that we will soon be in a place that is beyond Big Brother’s reach.
”For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (1 Thess. 4:16-18).
–Todd