Competent Intelligent Adult

April 6, 2025 6:44 PM

Ralph Goff appears to be a casualty of Trump's, Laura Loomer assisted purge of National Security leaders. Ralph was a 35 year employee and manager at the Central Intelligence Agency. Recently he was in the process of being appointed the Deputy Director for Operations until he was disqualified for his steadfast support of Ukraine and his antipathy towards Vladimir Putin. People can disagree about wether the CIA should exist. But as long as it's here, we would like it's employees and leaders to be competent, intelligent and human. In a series of recent interviews, including one with the odious Dan Crenshaw, Ralph brings the CIA out of the shadows and reveals himself to be the person you would have wanted in this important position.
posted by Xurando (14 comments total)

Shedding zero tears for CIA ghouls no matter what. There are actual good people getting fucked out of their jobs, defector has been interviewing many of them.
posted by youthenrage at 8:09 PM on April 6 [6 favorites]

Well, given the scope the CIA has to get up to various forms of mischief if it had a mind to (and, historically, it has indeed had such a mind), having good people in charge is more important at the CIA than almost anywhere.
posted by dg at 8:18 PM on April 6 [14 favorites]

Given who Trump likes to appoint to serve him in the government (signal scandal) we may be about to witness some truly incompetent and fucked up operations, even by CIA standards, in the coming months and years.
posted by Reverend John at 8:39 PM on April 6 [8 favorites]

"We would like its employees and leaders to be competent, intelligent, and human[e?]." Agreed 100%. I can't watch people who are as awful as I think Dan Crenshaw is—dude is clearly very smart and very competent but good lord I loathe his perspective—but the ideological questions associated with TFG's purges seem particularly pointed in high-stakes contexts like intelligence operations. Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA has a lot of problems (factual errors, bombastic oversimplifications, and a mistaken thesis chief among them), but the events it manages to accurately detail are still gobsmacking.

So yeah—do we want intelligence people who are

- competent and loyal to the Constitution?
- competent and loyal to the President?
- incompetent and loyal to the Constitution?
- incompetent and loyal to the President?

(on preview: what dg and Reverend John said.)
posted by vitia at 8:53 PM on April 6 [5 favorites]

I used to self identify as a pacifist anarchist vegetarian. I would love to see someone who identifies similarly as head of the CIA. Given that isn’t going to happen, competent and humane sounds pretty good.
posted by CostcoCultist at 9:54 PM on April 6 [5 favorites]

The reality of the CIA seems to be that it is a shitty, mostly incredibly boring place. But there are serious things that people in that role might presumably pay attention to, and theoretically they have some real resources. I certainly would prefer not to have some MAGA/DOGE idiot zealot in a position of real power there.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 10:30 PM on April 6 [2 favorites]

As I understand it, Carter got rid of the upper echelon at the CIA and other intelligence instrumentalities when he came to Washington, and those people responded by allying themselves with Republicans to rip his Presidency to shreds.

By, among other things, negotiating a weapons deal with Iran to hold onto the American hostages, and working with OPEC to keep US gas prices sky high.

So stay tuned to the appropriate channels.
posted by jamjam at 11:34 PM on April 6 [9 favorites]

Here's your obligatory reminder how the CIA nurtured and protected Nazis from Ukraine in order to weaponize Ukrainian nationalism.
posted by dmh at 11:45 PM on April 6 [5 favorites]

dmh, from your source:

The CIA never considered entering into an alliance with [onetime Nazi ally and advocate and practitioner of anti-Jewish ethnic cleansing] Bandera to procure intelligence from Ukraine. "By nature," read a CIA report, "[Bandera] is a political intransigent of great personal ambition, who [has] since April 1948, opposed all political organizations in the emigration which favor a representative form of government in the Ukraine as opposed to a mono-party, OUN/Bandera regime." Worse, his intelligence operatives in Germany were dishonest and not secure. Debriefings of couriers from western Ukraine in 1948 confirmed that, "the thinking of Stephan Bandera and his immediate émigré supporters [has] become radically outmoded in the Ukraine." Bandera was also a convicted assassin. By now, word had reached the CIA of Bandera's fratricidal struggles with other Ukrainian groups during the war and in the emigration. By 1951 Bandera turned vocally anti-American as well, since the US did not advocate an independent Ukraine." The CIA had an agent within the Bandera group in 1951 mostly to keep an eye on Bandera. (82–83)

Am I missing something?
posted by vitia at 12:02 AM on April 7 [2 favorites]

I appreciate it's a long report, so here are a few relevant quotes with page numbers.

Once in the United States, [Mykola] Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his “cunning character,” his “relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,” that [sic] the fact that he was “a very ruthless operator.” (p. 87)

One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and … there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.” (p. 89)

As late as 1991 the CIA tried to dissuade OSI from approaching the German, Polish, and Soviet governments for war-related records related to the OUN. OSI eventually gave up the case, unable to procure definitive documents on Lebed. Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998. (p. 91)
posted by dmh at 12:56 AM on April 7 [2 favorites]

I've never paid much attention to the Iran–Contra affair, jamjam, but I'm amused by the idea that the CIA intentionally worsened things for Jimmy Carter, thanks.

Ideally, the CIA winds up incompetent enough that all their project backfire, not sure that's possible but hey.

Actually, Trump's CIA director John Ratcliffe previously used his position as DNI under Trump to manipulate US elections, so maybe the CIA will focus its efforts against Democrats, while shedding tallent who know anything international. lol

Anyways, Timothy Haugh and Wendy Noble at the NSA and Cyber(sex) Command being replaced matters more than Ralph Goff, because their replacements would presumably turn the larger surveillance-industrial complex against political opponents of Trump.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:40 AM on April 7 [2 favorites]

Considering that Langley at its most competent and loyal produced things like Operation Condor and the Phoenix Program, I think I'd prefer them to be incompetent and disloyal to the president.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:18 AM on April 7 [5 favorites]

People can disagree about wether the CIA should exist. But as long as it's here, we would like it's employees and leaders to be competent, intelligent and human.

I think everyone at mefi can agree with that :) Thanks for the interesting links!
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 6:54 AM on April 7 [2 favorites]

If the CIA gets ratfucked and run by incompetent fools all the better.

The only real problem is that they'll use the reputation the agency still mysteriously has as something decent, necessary, and competent, to try to give their own fantasies a venier or respectability.

Same really as the FBI. It's always been shit, it will always be shit, it has never really fundamentally changed since it was Hoover's personal playground, and I shed no tears for the people purged at the FBI.

But I do fear what the Fascists currently running the FBI will do with its powers and inexplicable reputation.
posted by sotonohito at 12:01 PM on April 7 [1 favorite]