J. Michael Waller and I met exactly one week after the events of January 6, 2021. We both published our first observations of that day on January 13. Waller writes, “Secret Officer: What I saw in the lead up to the storming of the U.S. Capitol” was published on the website of the Center for Security Policy.What I saw in Washington DC on January 6th” he posted a blog titled “
Readers began cross-pollinating the two articles and messaging Waller and me suggesting that we “check out” each other’s work. We did, and a friendship was born, so I’ll dispense with the stylebook requirement and call him “Mike” from now on.
Reform will require American voters to better understand how culturally and constitutionally destructive our nation’s intelligence agencies are.
While my initial observations about January 6th were based on pure intuition, Mike’s observations were informed by 40 years of experience in intelligence agencies. Still, there were significant similarities in what we saw individually. From his main list, he saw the following:
- Plainclothes militants;
- The instigators.
- Fake Trump protesters, and
- A disciplined line of uniformed attackers.
My “list” was less informative, but essentially the same. My initial conversations with Mike were one of mutual admiration for correspondent-to-correspondent observations and inferences. I was relieved that someone of his background and experience had given me the endorsement. While many of the specific cases and individuals from January 6th have been reexamined and conclusions changed based on the now available video and much of the trial discovery, the bulk of what we published on January 13, 2021 still stands.
For over three years, Mike has been a continuous and valuable resource whenever my research intersected with his expertise.
microphone Started his career He joined the CIA under the legendary William J. Casey and worked with the Nicaraguan Contras to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Central America, gathering intelligence that the Soviet Union was supporting Communist insurgencies in the region. This is getting interestingAfter earning his PhD in International Security Affairs from Boston University, he has a myriad of academic achievements and accomplishments.
His latest book, “The Secrets of Intelligence, Born from decades of field experience and research both inside and outside the intelligence community,Big Intelligence: How the CIA and FBI went from Cold War heroes to Deep State villains. ”
Sorry for the late review of “Big Intel,” which was published in January. Mike sent me a preview copy last fall, around the time I was starting to get seasick at Blaze Media and the FBI noose was tightening around my neck due to my coverage of the January 6th protests and subsequent riots. (Sorry, Mike.)
Knowing that the subject matter was to my liking, I kept putting off reading “The Big Intel” until I could give it the attention it deserved. What’s worse, I could have at least read it with enthusiasm. Audible version During a semi-transcontinental drive between Raleigh, Washington DC, and Dallas.
During a long drive, IWhite pillAfter I finish reading “The White Pill” by Michael Maris instead of “Big Intel,” guess what will show up in my recommended follow-up list on my Audible account: “Big Intel” by my lesser-read friend Dr. Waller.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well “The White Pill” and “Big Intel” complement each other. I recommend them as sister works. Maris’ book is a comprehensive look at the rise and fall of the Soviet empire and how so many in the West, including the United States, praised and justified the brutal prison planet they sought to build. In contrast, “Big Intel” focuses on the beginnings of the FBI and CIA and how some of the leadership positions of the newly founded intelligence agencies in the 20th century sympathetically adopted and borrowed personnel and ideas from Eastern European totalitarians.
Therein lies the revelatory and terrifying message of “Big Intelligence.” Both the FBI and the CIA, ostensibly established to protect the country from foreign and domestic dangers, were variously influenced by the country’s Frankfurt School Marxist scholars.
According to “Big Intelligence,” the CIA was poisoned from the start; it took the FBI a while to catch up, in part because of longtime director J. Edgar Hoover’s unwavering anti-Communism. But as Mike details in this thoroughly researched, extensively footnoted, and engrossing page-turner, the FBI got there.
In the book’s introduction, Mike quotes the late Bishop Fulton Sheen: “Public unawareness of tragedy is the hallmark of a civilization in decline.”
“Big Intel” reveals how Marxist infiltrators in the FBI and CIA nurtured a freedom-robbing cancer into a terminal disease by slowly and deliberately infecting leftist ideology, ultimately leading these agencies and their agents to prioritize harmful ideas like “diversity and inclusion,” “racial equality,” “critical theory,” and “political correctness” over national security and the Constitution.
Steeped in history, Big Intelligence reveals how we got to this point, including background on many of the heroes and villains in intelligence history. Mike explains that Karl Marx’s “goal was not to improve family, human relationships, economics, patriotism, loyalty, morality, religion, or Western civilization, but to destroy it — the destruction of the entire human race.”
The CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, was commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and created by “Wild Bill” Donovan, who was funded by the president’s secret budget, but Hoover considered Donovan a “Communist sympathizer.”
Before the OSS was founded, America had no real counterintelligence capabilities and relied heavily on the already established British MI6. But the British operatives who mentored Donovan in establishing the OSS were double agents loyal to Stalin. Mike writes that “Donovan seemed unaware of the fact that the Communists and foreign operatives recruited by the OSS did not have America’s interests first.” Donovan’s ignorance meant that the OSS, and later the CIA, were poisoned practically from the start.
Mike has a much more favorable assessment of J. Edgar Hoover than most contemporary commentators and historians. His staunch anti-Communism prevented the FBI from being infected early with Cultural Marxism. I won’t spoil for readers of “Big Intel” how Mike deals with the accusations of homosexuality and cross-dressing leveled at Hoover in recent history.
One of the more interesting stories told in “Big Intel” is Mike’s long-standing and close relationship with “a senior FBI official, counterintelligence supervisor, named Bob,” who had a special interest in Mike’s work. Mike last spoke with Bob in January 2001, just two weeks before his arrest.
“Bob” was none other than Robert Philip Hanssen, whose espionage for Russia the Department of Justice called “perhaps the worst intelligence disaster in American history.”
Over two decades, Hanssen provided classified national security information to the Soviet Union and Russia in exchange for about $1.5 million in cash, paper money and diamonds. He pleaded guilty to 15 espionage counts and died in prison last year.
Mike goes to great lengths to analyze the historical devolution of the FBI and CIA from guardians of the Republic to active participants in establishing and enforcing Cultural Marxism within America’s key public institutions. From FDR and Donavan to Obama and Clapper, BLM and Antifa, the Steele Dossier, Crossfire Hurricane, COVID and January 6th, Mike misses no one or anything in his thorough analysis.
Unlike many lengthy editorials that accurately portray our institutions’ slide toward disaster, Mike concludes with expert recommendations for restoring and rebuilding America’s intelligence agencies to the honorable and heroic institutions we once thought we had. But reform won’t be easy. American voters need to know and recognize better just how destructive our intelligence agencies really are, both culturally and constitutionally.
If every American voter had the attention span for more than a TikTok reel and read “Big Intel,” my friend Mike might get credited with helping save America from today’s weaponized FBI and CIA.
