Ex-CIA Chief John Brennan Should Be Sent to Mars

by Matt Taibbi | Jan 25, 2025

John Brennan couldn’t help himself. Publicly taken down a notch by an executive order, the former CIA chief needed to show everyone how smart he still is. In the process, he slipped up, showing why former spy heads like himself need resettling on a new planet:

On Monday Donald Trump signed “Holding Former Government Officials Accountable For Election Interference And Improper Disclosure Of Sensitive Governmental Information,” stripping security clearances of 51 officials who signed an infamous public letter saying the Hunter Biden laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The key passage of Trump’s order:

In the closing weeks of the 2020 Presidential campaign, at least 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to issue a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business. Signatories of the letter falsely suggested that the news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

The list included other former CIA chiefs like Leon Panetta, Michael Hayden, Michael Morell, and John McLaughlin, the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Brennan chief of staff (and husband to CNN’s Dana) Jeremy Bash, Brennan aide Nick Shapiro, and many other restless ex-spooks of the John Sipher type. Some were participants both in Russiagate and the bizarre laptop affair, in which the FBI and figures from other intelligence agencies rallied to quash a New York Post exposé before the 2020 election.

A wealth of ugly detail about the 2020 “spies who lie” caper has emerged since then, none flattering to Brennan or his Get Smart circle of pompous nation-minders. Politically, the smart thing to do was let it go. But Brennan couldn’t do it, instead joining MSNBC host (and Alan Greenspan spouse; political intermarriage in DC is a thing) Andrea Mitchell the day after the order. Brennan’s money quote:

[Trump] misrepresented the facts in that executive order because it said that we had suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. No, we said it was all the hallmarks of Russian information operations, including the dumping of accurate information, which is what we said in that letter.

He’s technically right. The “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” does not claim that “the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter” was part of a “disinformation campaign.” The words “information operation” do appear instead of “disinformation operation.” I’d argue this still “suggested” disinformation, especially since the letter went on to talk about being “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case,” but Brennan and his pals didn’t use the D-word.

However, if the former Langley chief was going to take semantic offense over someone “misrepresenting” his words, he would have done it on October 19th, 2020. That was the day Natasha Bertrand broke the story of the letter, after Brennan’s aide Shapiro brought it to Politico to be released to the world. The headline of that story: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

Politico’s service in embellishing the “51 spies” letter was a key part of the scam, allowing the signatories to smear Miranda Devine’s Post report without calling it factually inaccurate. If Brennan really had no intention to call the laptop story “disinformation,” he and Shapiro would have MF-ed their favorite reporter minutes after publication and gotten the headline changed. It’s still up.

And if he didn’t do it on October 19th, 2020, Brennan surely should have said something on October 22nd, when Biden in a debate with Trump said “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that [the laptop story] is a Russian plan,” and “five former heads of the CIA… say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.” The letter said only that that signatories “suspect” Russian involvement, and as Brennan himself just pointed out, never said the story was wrong. A John Brennan who truly feared being misunderstood would have corrected Biden, and of course didn’t.

Note that Brennan just chose to quibble over a small semantic issue when the Trump order makes more serious charges. Trump claimed the 51 former intelligence officials “coordinated with the Biden campaign” to issue the infamous letter. It’s significant, but not surprising, that Brennan let this issue go.

In April 2023, Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, asking about his Committee’s interview with former acting CIA head Michael Morell. Morell, Jordan said, told investigators that Blinken, then a Biden campaign official, called Morell after Devine’s Post story came out, ostensibly to gauge his reaction. Irrespective of the intent of the call, Morell explained that hearing from Blinken was the impetus for generating the “51 spies” public letter. Asked why he put the letter together, Morell said bluntly, “I wanted [Biden] to win.”

I noted at the time there was a conspicuous media blackout on this story. We’ve since learned other facts that suggest a broader scandal (like that the FBI falsely briefed a pair of Senators that the laptop story was disinformation in August of 2020), but if the “51 spies” letter really was “coordinated” with the Biden campaign, that’s a far bigger issue than whether or not John Brennan used the word “disinformation.”

Brennan has long been a powerful behind-the-scenes figure, dating back to the late 2000s and early 2010s, when he was nicknamed “Obama’s Drone Master” and “Deputy President.” He was the leader of an effort to forge a malodorous Intelligence Community Assessment in 2017 claiming Russia was conducting another “influence operation” to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton while showing a “clear preference” for Donald Trump. I worked with Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag at Public last year on a story showing that Brennan suppressed dissent from his own hand-picked analysts to “cook” the intelligence on the way to that conclusion, which really kick-started the Russiagate lunacy.

Brennan’s MSNBC interview was mostly an amusing self-own, but if I were Trump, I’d be volunteering this guy for the Terraform Mars mission, or relocating him to a zoo enclosure with bears. Just as you can set your watch by a junkie returning to grab an unguarded TV, unhappily “retired” spy chiefs will eventually find ways to meddle in domestic politics. This is especially true since another Trump order, on “Ending the Weaponization of Federal Government,” mandated a sweeping review into past intelligence community actions that has certain circles in freakout mode already. A lot of people have a lot to lose. Does anyone really think we’ve heard the last of that crew?

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