Profiles in Evil: John Brennan

Whether lying to American citizens or spying on us, John Brennan is an exemplar of Ahrimanic Evil.

Art by Jeffrey Karl.

It used to be that the association of three little letters with someone’s name conferred a measure of trust and status.

C.I.A.

Often depicted as the good guys in Hollywood movies, we see field agents as protagonists sneaking into an evildoer’s fortress or chasing foreign baddies across rooftops. But far from being public servant paladin-spies for all that’s right and good, we are learning that C.I.A. is unaccountable and corrupt.

“The fish stinks from the head,” says the old maxim. Whether or not that maxim is true, it’s hard to deny the smell that issues from John O. Brennan.

A Strong Word

In a long and distinguished career of lying to Americans, spying on citizens, and wiping his tush pucker with the Constitution, Brennan manages to suckle at the taxpayer teat to this very day. He is a functionary of the highest order, willing to do anything for those he perceives as the good guys.

And that, of course, makes his actions all the more insidious.

In the handful of examples that follow, I’ll demonstrate that Brennan is an exemplar of Ahrimanic Evil:

Named after Ahriman (Angra Mainyu), the Zoroastrian spirit opposing the divine, this evil seeks to invert values, creating a system where virtues are viewed as vices and lies are promoted as truths. It embodies the despair and soullessness of totalitarian systems, where individuals become mere cogs in a vast machine. This evil is marked by its desire for control instead of freedom, preferring a rigid hierarchy and systematization of people in society. It represents a shift from the chaotic individualism of Luciferic evil to an oppressive order that stifles the human spirit.

You might think evil is too strong a word for someone tasked with making life-or-death decisions purportedly in service of his country. But breathless appeals to duty, honor, and patriotism can’t obscure the misdeeds we know about.

I shudder to think what’s still classified.

Killing in the Name Of

Brennan is credited with being a key architect of the Obama administration's drone strike program, which targeted suspected terrorists in countries like Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. While some saw the program as a necessary counterterrorism tool, it has been widely criticized for causing civilian casualties, raising ethical and legal concerns over extrajudicial killings, and expanding U.S. military actions without congressional approval.

The American left used to refer to W. as “Bush-Hitler.” This irony will come full circle in several ways.

Brennan’s tenure as a senior official in the CIA coincides with the agency's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" on terrorism suspects following the 9/11 attacks. Such techniques have been widely condemned as torture. Although Brennan later claimed he opposed such techniques, he defended the practices on consequentialist grounds.

And that’s not all.

Spying on the Senate

In 2014, Brennan’s CIA was found to have spied on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who were investigating the agency's use of torture. Brennan initially denied the allegations but later apologized after a CIA inspector general report confirmed the spying had taken place.

The breach of trust between the intelligence community and Congress fueled intense criticism of Brennan's leadership, demonstrating the extent to which the man was willing to resist congressional oversight.

Similar patterns would return even after his stint as CIA chief.

The Atlantic Council

Since his tenure of impunity as CIA director under Obama, Brennan has been associated with the Atlantic Council, a prominent think hawk tank focusing on national security and international relations issues.

Emphasizing U.S.-NATO cooperation, the Atlantic Council influences U.S. foreign policy. But it has faced severe criticism for its deep ties to powerful political and corporate entities in what we have called “The Glob,” which I have speculated is America’s shadow government.

The Atlantic Council (of Digital Forensics Lab infamy) receives funds from the US Army and Navy, Blackstone, Raytheon, Lockheed, the NATO STRATCOM Center of Excellence, and more. —Racket News

Critics argue that the organization's funding sources—including governments, defense contractors, and energy companies—create conflicts of interest and raise concerns about its impartiality. Its ties to industries with vested interests in U.S. foreign adventurism and military actions have led some to view the Atlantic Council as a facilitator of both bellicose foreign policy and domestic civil rights abuses—including mass censorship.

Its connections with prominent political figures like Brennan and its role in shaping and censoring public discourse have sparked concerns about the outsized influence of such elite networks to suppress free expression, popular sovereignty, and constitutional law. In short, the NGO is one of the world’s biggest organizations engaged in censorship by proxy.

The Atlantic Council is meant to be a 501c3 nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. But it and Brennan have left partisan fingerprints everywhere.

Russia, Russia, Russia

As CIA Director, Brennan was a central figure in the U.S. intelligence community's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He was instrumental in compiling that which led to the official U.S. government assessment in 2017, which concluded that Russia had attempted to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump revoked Brennan's security clearance, accusing him of using his access to sensitive information to criticize the administration. Brennan had become a vocal critic of Trump, frequently appearing in the media to question the president’s ties to Russia, which we now know were a contrived multi-year psyop of guilt-by-accusation—starting with the Steele Dosier.

As we will see, Brennan still has an axe to grind.

50 Plus Brennan Makes 51

Brennan played a key role in a controversial letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials in October 2020 that suggested the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The letter, made public shortly after the New York Post reported on the laptop's contents, claimed that the timing and nature of the revelations bore the hallmarks of Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. election.

We now know this effort was a combination of дезинформация (dezinformatsiya), election interference, and First Amendment violations.

Brennan and the other signatories asserted the story could influence voters—despite the laptop's established authenticity. Critics argue that the letter, which was widely covered by mainstream media, contributed to the suppression of the story during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, limiting public discussion of its contents likely to affect the election’s outcome.

The Faucist

Here’s Brennan defending a man who, for decades, doggedly pursued funding gain-of-function research on a virus that likely killed 16 million people worldwide, colluded with NIH director Collins to cover it up, actively censored dissenting voices, denied under oath that the research was gain-of-function, spear-headed a vaccine program that might have increased health risks and excess mortality for millions more, benefitted financially from the rollout, clapped while the Biden Administration mandated the vaccine for 80 million people—most of whom were already at lower risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19.

Anthony Fauci is the very definition of a fascist—that is, one who supports the alliance between corporate and state power under the direction of central authorities. John O. Brennan is not only a defender of the execrable Fauci but operates at the nexus of corporations, states, and NGOs under the direction of central authorities, too.

But wait…

October Unsurprised

Brennan: “We have seen this continuous pattern over the course of many years of Donald Trump endorsing individuals such as a Hitler, disparaging the U.S. military, advocating for fascism, which is what John Kelly said, that he is fascist.” —quoted in The Hill

Brennan was back in the news recently with the above quote, arguing that the former president is a cryptofascist and an admirer of Adolf Hitler.

There’s that smell again.

It has all of the hallmarks of Brennan’s 2020 antics. But worse, it comes with the moralistic air we’ve come to suspect from someone, directly and indirectly, involved in all manner of illiberal acts, including the extra-judicial murder of American Citizens.

Brennan should have been put out to pasture after being caught spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee. His reputation should have been toast after the Laptop suppression affair. Yet here he is, putting his tax-subsidized thumb on the electoral scale—again.

John Brennan has a First Amendment right to offer his opinions on Presidential candidates. But for his complicity in the rest of it, evil is not too strong a word.

Thanks to artist Jeff Karl for the illustrations. Oh, and I am not suicidal :-)