Russian meddling in U.S. politics since 2016 has angered the CIA to a degree comparable to the outrage that coursed through the agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to retired senior case officer Patrick Weninger.
In a recent appearance on the Team House podcast, Mr. Weninger shared new details of his work overseeing the CIA’s Russia operations starting in 2017 and just how “pissed off” America’s premier spy agency really was.
“We viewed 2016 as a — and I want to show respect to 9/11 because of the lost souls, and I do — not to the level of 9/11 but a version of 9/11 where that’s how deep it struck a chord what the Russians did,” Mr. Weninger told the podcast, which is hosted by former U.S. Special Forces operators Jack Murphy and Dave Parke.
Mr. Weninger said Moscow is laughing at the divisions between Americans about the political investigations into Russian influence operations aimed at the United States.
Questions about whether the intelligence community missed warning signs about Russian active measures have swirled for years. U.S. intelligence officials told The Washington Times in 2017 that top intelligence professionals were looking under the wrong rocks to track Russian wrongdoing.
Mr. Weninger told the Team House podcast that the CIA made changes to start looking under the right ones.
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