The Washington Post’s David Ignatius Remains the Leading Apologist for the CIA

Melvin Goodman CounterPunch April 2, 2025

For the past 20 years, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius has been the mainstream media’s leading apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency, and his latest editorial essay (“Intelligence analysts are still doing their job”) indicates he is loathe to yield his title.  In reviewing the CIA’s “Annual Threat Assessment,” Ignatius falsely credits the CIA’s analysts with “giving priority to Trump’s concerns but not, so far as I could tell, fudging the facts.”  In my 25 years as a CIA intelligence analyst, I often worked on these annual assessment and can assure readers that Ignatius is terribly wrong when he states that in these assessments “priorities can shift, for better or worse, depending on who’s in power.”

Ignatius is arguing that the annual assessments are politicized to some degree as a matter of course, but directors such as Richard Helms, William Colby, Adm. Stansfield Turner, and William Burns refused to engage in politicization.  Directors such as William Casey, Robert Gates, and James Schlesinger tried to politicize assessments, but they were often challenged successfully.  This year’s assessment is blatantly political and suggests that, like other agencies and departments of government in the Trump era, the CIA is not willing to tell truth to power.