Before Russia attacked Ukraine, President Joe Biden commended the CIA for “exposing Putin’s playbook” in a speech marking the agency’s 75th birthday.
Standing in front of a Memorial Wall with 139 stars representing CIA operatives who died in the line of duty, he commended them as the “bedrock of our national security.” According to the CIA, 37 spies’ names remain under wraps to this day.
The president also spoke about the tragic murder of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and its “deep impact” during his speech. Before leaving for Langley, Virginia, Biden had stopped at the Japanese embassy in Washington, DC, to offer his sympathies.
Biden told agents of one of the most secretive bodies in the world it was their duty to ‘prevent plots or threats.’
‘Where possible we have to seek to balance secrecy with transparency,’ the president said. ‘To shine a light on atrocities and prevent plots or threats, or acts of aggression before they happen.’
He added that ‘the greatest value of our intelligence collection is the good we do with it.’
Earlier in the speech Biden credited the CIA’s intelligence-gathering efforts on Russian President Vladimir Putin as having ‘punched a hole’ in the autocrat’s plan to invade Ukraine.
‘It’s indispensable to me, as I face some of the difficult decisions, and have the best possible information provided by the most capable, reliable intelligence community in the world. Again, not hyperbole, you are clearly the best in the whole world,’ Biden said.
‘It was thanks to the incredible work of our intelligence professionals that we were able to forewarn the world what Vladimir Putin was planning in Ukraine.’
Republicans and Democrats alike commended the US intelligence agency this year for its prompt and precise reporting on Putin’s army buildup on the Ukrainian border and its alerts to an impending invasion.
According to reports, Putin had been preparing to attack the neighboring nation for some weeks before the assault began on February 24.
We observed his actions. You observed it. According to the president, Putin’s playbook was exposed by the forces he was gathering and the plans he was developing, which “punched a huge hole in the pretense and invalidated his lies about what we were doing in Ukraine.”
They accomplished this “without disclosing sources and tactics that had been crucial to our capacity to rally our allies and partners around the world,” he continued.
Biden also commended the agency’s growing ‘diversity’ and urged its officers to always deliver him the truth, whether it’s damaging or positive.
‘Our intelligence is more robust when we tap the full strength of our diversity as a nation. My first trip here years ago, I looked out and there wasn’t nearly as much diversity as there is today,’ the president said.
‘If everyone brings the same ideas, the same experience the same skill sets to work, we leave some pretty big blind spots in our security.’
He said the CIA often fielded ‘big questions, the hardest questions’ and conceded that intelligence assessments cannot always be ‘100 percent right.’
But it does mean that I expect you to tell me the truth, no matter what,’ Biden said.
‘I expect each of you to honor the democratic values and ideals that form the core of our nation’s strength.’
It’s a stark departure from his predecessor’s controversial speech at CIA Headquarters in 2017.
Donald Trump had spent a significant portion of his remarks in front of the CIA Memorial Wall griping about the ‘dishonest media,’ boasting about the crowd size at one of his appearances and discussing a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office.
‘I am so behind you,’ Trump told the roughly 400 agents in attendance.
‘You’re gonna get so much backing. Maybe you’re gonna say, please, don’t give us so much backing, Mr. President, please, we don’t need that much backing.’
Former CIA Director John Brennan was ‘deeply saddened and angered at Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes,’ his former deputy chief of staff wrote on Twitter.