by JEREMY KUZMAROV
They embody a party that crossed over to the dark side years ago
In March 2018, Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site published a political pamphlet entitled “The CIA Democrats.”
In it, he wrote that “an extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department” were “seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.”
This is a departure from the 1960s and 1970s when Democrats like George McGovern, Leo Ryan and Frank Church were against wars like Vietnam and sought to reign in the CIA.
Some of the Class of 2018 CIA Democrats, like Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, were recruited as part of a “red-to-blue” program targeting vulnerable Republican-held seats.
In the 2018 race, there were far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party than for the Republicans. Martin wrote that there were so many “spooks” that with a “nod to Mad Magazine,” one might call the primaries “spy vs. spy.”
CovertAction Magazine has kept tabs on the “spook-soldiers” who were elected as part of the Class of 2018 and followed their careers in Congress. (According to Martin, 30 spook-soldiers won primaries and 11 were elected to Congress.)
Below is a summary of how some of them fared in the 2024 election:
1. Elissa Slotkin:
Slotkin narrowly defeated Republican challenger Mike Rogers in Michigan on November 5 for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Slotkin is the one-time assistant to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Prior to her election to Congress, Slotkin put her stamp on the U.S.’s disastrous Ukraine policy as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense following the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in 2014.
Over the past six years as a Member of Congress, Slotkin has continued to fervently support the Ukraine war, telling an NPR reporter: “I think we’ve got to give them [Ukraine] what they need….This is a black and white issue. Our weapons have made a huge difference.”
In reality, the only difference those weapons made is in killing more people while prolonging Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.
overt Action Magazine for more