Central Intelligence Agency director John O. Brennan has been cooking up a storm in Ukraine and “Brennan Kiev” is the entrée on the menu. Brennan recently paid a secret visit to the Ukrainian capital to discuss with coup leaders their response to the insurgency sweeping eastern Ukraine. It has been reported by various European news agencies that Brennan landed on April 12 in Kiev with a diplomatic passport under a false identity.
Brennan reportedly urged members of the “Council of National Security and Defense,” the supreme authority created by the leaders who ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in a February coup, to put down the rebellion by pro-Russian Ukrainians in the east with extreme force. Brennan and other U.S. government officials have also been responsible for identifying secessionists in the east as “terrorists,” which is part of a major U.S. and Western intelligence propaganda war against eastern Ukrainian secessionist leaders and the Russian government.
The intelligence on Brennan’s secret visit to Kiev primarily came from Yanukovych loyalists who remain embedded in the Ukrainian government, as well as Ukrainian Communist Party officials still serving as members of the Ukrainian parliament. Brennan has coordinated the CIA’s counter-Russian activities with the intelligence services of America’s NATO allies in eastern Europe, particularly those of the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. It is also significant that Brennan, who is the son of Irish immigrants, is married to Kathy Pokluda, a native of New Jersey who is of Czech descent. Brennan’s three children, Kyle, Kelly, and Jaclyn, are Czech-Irish. Pokludas are not only found in the Czech Republic but also in Slovakia and western Ukraine. Brennan’s ties to the Czech Republic, which has elected leaders who are virulently anti-Russian, may explain, in part, Brennan’s eagerness to ratchet up tensions with Moscow in eastern Ukraine.
The United States and Britain had called leaders of the violent rebellion that overthrew Yanukovych in February “freedom fighters” and “pro-democracy forces” even though armed right-wing nationalist militias fired on the crowd of protesters in Maidan Square from sniper nests in buildings around the protest venue. The West’s “freedom fighters” shot to death a number of protesters and police officers. The CIA, mainly using George Soros “civil society” front groups and media operations, issued talking points that the sniper fire came from Yanukovych government loyalists and even Russian special forces units.
However, what the CIA accused Yanukovych and Russia of doing in Ukraine is exactly what is has been doing for the past several weeks: deploying special forces units, including CIA-directed private security forces from Academi (the infamous ex-Blackwater) to fire on pro-Russian protesters throughout eastern Ukraine.
Brennan, whose pro-Saudi feelings are so well-known he is nicknamed “Sheikh Brennan” by CIA insiders, reportedly helped craft a violent response by Ukrainian security forces in the eastern city of Slovyansk and other population centers, including Donetsk, Kharkov, and Lugansk. As is the normal routine for traveling CIA directors, Brennan would have been assisted in providing consultation to Ukrainian officials by a team from the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, including CIA field officers who have previously been posted in Ukraine and who speak fluent Ukrainian.
In reaction to Brennan’s presence in the Ukrainian capital, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded an explanation from Washington about what Brennan was doing in Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference, Lavrov said Russia has yet to receive a reasonable response from the United States about the purpose of Brennan’s clandestine trip to Kiev.
The CIA has a long history of taking over virtual command of foreign security services like the Ukrainian Security Service or Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrayiny (SBU). During the reign of the Shah of Iran, the CIA gave orders to the dreaded Iranian SAVAK security service and after he stepped down as CIA director, Richard Helms became the U.S. ambassador in Tehran. As with Brennan’s recent activities in Ukraine, Helms gave the orders to the CIA-trained SAVAK in Iran. What followed Helms’s service in Tehran was the Islamic revolution that, in part, was in reaction to the CIA’s training of SAVAK agents in torture techniques and extrajudicial executions of Iranian opposition leaders.
The CIA also virtually ran the intelligence services of Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Dominican Republic caudillo Rafael Trujillo, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza. However, in what may cause some apprehension among the interim leaders of Kiev, it should be noted that when the CIA grew tired of these dictators, it quickly helped eject them from power. Mobutu died in exile in Morocco after being overthrown by forces aided by the CIA. Trujillo was assassinated in his chauffeured Chevrolet Bel Air by plotters trained by the CIA. Noriega was arrested while seeking asylum in the Vatican embassy in Panama City after a U.S. military invasion; he served prison sentences in Florida and France and is now rotting away in a Panamanian jungle prison; and Somoza was forced to flee Nicaragua after a cut-off in U.S. support; his car was later hit by an anti-tank rocket while he lived in exile in Paraguay.
Ukrainian acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, and other Ukrainian coup leaders have obviously not considered what the CIA does to its foreign “friends” after they become unneeded and disposable.
Ukrainian Communist Party parliamentary deputy Vladimir Golub told RIA Novosti that the Ukrainian SBU had become a “unit of the CIA.”
CIA officials rejected the reports that Brennan was in Kiev as “an outright lie.” However, Brennan has been known to lie in the past about CIA clandestine operations and the CIA issued its standard reply that it would “neither confirm nor deny” Brennan’s presence in Ukraine.
Brennan was less than truthful about his role with the Saudis and Qataris in a failed CIA operation in Benghazi, Libya, that saw the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other America diplomatic personnel killed by Libyan Islamist rebels in an attempt to transfer weapons from the armories of ousted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to Salafist guerrillas in Syria. Brennan was the deputy national security adviser to President Obama at the time of the Benghazi disaster. After CIA Director David Petraeus’s admission of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Brennan, a retired CIA National Clandestine Services officer with long ties to Saudi Arabia, was named as Petraeus’s replacement.
Brennan helped craft the George W. Bush administration’s secret rendition and torture policy used against “Al Qaeda” suspects around the world. After his retirement in 2005, Brennan became the chief executive officer of The Analysis Corporation (TAC), a favorite CIA private contractor.
During the outset of the 2008 presidential campaign, Brennan’s TAC employees in the State Department’s Passport Office ensured that certain information on Obama and his relatives were deleted from State Department files. The mini-scandal, which also involved the passport records of Obama’s opponents, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, were also deleted from the files. Brennan was rewarded for his work on behalf of the Obama campaign with the number two job on the National Security Council and, ultimately, the directorship of the CIA after Petraeus’s downfall. Brennan makes few decisions without first discussing them with Obama. Any decision to send CIA operatives, including private mercenaries, into eastern Ukraine would have Obama’s official consent, done by the signing of a “Presidential Finding,” or unofficially with a mere “wink and a nod” to Brennan.
Brennan, who has been called a “knuckle-dragging thug” by current and retired CIA officials who know him, is not the most welcomed figure in Ukraine if the Kiev authorities actually desire a peaceful outcome with its opponents . . .
This article originally appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
