Barry Incognito

Monday, September 16, 2024

Barry Incognito

To follow intelligence analysis is to dabble in hyperactive speculation. What our spying institutions do looks a lot like political punditry, since it involves trying to figure out from a distance which players are secretly friends with other players on the larger political scene. Politicians often enough accuse each other of harboring allies with whom they have secret alliance, and having contacts who have furtive agendas.

The intelligence community tries to analyze links between domestic and international actors. Sometimes the work of connecting the dots reveals hidden motives, sometimes it all adds up to strong suspicions, involving coincidences rather than obvious sneaky behavior.

This blog has referenced a lot of stories suggesting Russian and Chinese influence in our politics, regarding policies that would appear unduly friendly to those dictatorships. Both countries spend considerable money and effort trying to nudge American and Western politics in directions favorable to their perceived interests. But our analysis hasn’t spent as much time mulling the influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various allies around the world.

Today, we cover some of this ground by way of a report from John Schindler, a former counterintelligence officer, who has his own Substack newsletter called Top Secret Umbra. Schindler is a retired spy as well as an accomplished history author specialized in southeast Europe.

Schindler published his analysis in a newsletter titled “Who Really Is Barack Obama? A Counterintelligence Inquiry”. His analysis relied on his experience and expertise in the turn-of-the-millennium jihadist wars on the fringes of Europe where they intersected with Western politics. Schindler identified several dots and brought them into better focus, illustrating the connections between them.

Yet as Schindler warned regarding speculative amateur analysis:

Asking questions is the nature of counterintelligence work. Making hypotheses based on limited information constitutes the cornerstone of counterespionage. If you’re not judicious, you can wind up in the vaunted Wilderness of Mirrors alarmingly easily. “Just asking questions” here doesn’t mean social media sealioning, rather making informed inferences from intelligence fragments, looking for patterns. This is why counterintelligence must be left to professionals, while there are few things more toxic in a democracy than amateur counterintelligence weaponized for partisan purposes (see: Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy).

He is cautious not to make accusations while still sketching a surprising image of odd friendships in the world of Barack Obama. His analysis is based on known details as well as inferences from private interactions. He winds up describing relationships that should be a topic of public discussion which could suggest a clear through-line from the Obama presidency through the Biden administration in terms of personnel and policy, hinting at what might constitute the international relations objectives of a Harris/Walz administration.

Schindler has counterintelligence expertise earned from the pre-9/11 era of Islamic radicalism. Drawing on that, he looks at reputable reporting in a wider context to examine established affiliations among members of the Obama administration and the world of islamic radicals. Figures with known affiliations to jihadist-linked groups are numerous, and several have served in executive branch offices related to American foreign policy, national security, and national defense.

When he wrote about connections linking Trump and Republicans to Russians with *ahem* unusual backgrounds, Schindler says, he did so with the approval liberal pundits and political figures. When he writes here about connections linking top Democrats to islamic radicals, he is regarded as a political turncoat. This will be familiar to anyone who has felt the sting of rejection by a political tribe. Yet the questions he asks deserve wider attention than they get—not to mention answers. That is, if we weren’t merely consuming politics nationally as never-ending tribal warfare put on by the infotainment industry.

I have read Schindler’s analysis for many years, even if I hadn’t read his writing consistently in more recently. I take his reporting seriously. His analysis is worthwhile, and I can do no better than to recommend reading the linked example. What he describes looks odd at the very least, but politicians can only get away with questionable behavior when the media give them a free pass and avoid challenging them. Key figures in the Obama, Biden, and nascent Harris administrations should have to explain and defend their unusual political friendships in the radical islamist world.