In Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains, J. Michael Waller describes the crisis America is facing with the subversion of our intelligence institutions. Waller is the senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy and the president of Georgetown Research, a political risk and private intelligence company. He holds a Ph.D. in International Security Affairs from Boston University. Big Intel itself builds on Waller’s earlier Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today. That book predicted today’s gangster government in Russia, run by former KGB officers.
Waller’s analysis is deeply rooted in his own life experiences. Straight out of a John le Carré novel, he has had some very “up close and personal” brushes with spies and spycraft — beginning with early recruitment by that old Cold War warrior, Reagan CIA Director William Casey, which led to fieldwork in Latin America. Later studies and trips in the ’90s brought Waller to the Soviet Union, which placed him in contact with the notorious FBI turncoat Bob Hanssen, which in turn led to an awkward moment with FBI Director Louis Freeh. Most of this riveting biographical information is told in Big Intel’s first 30 pages, thus briefly establishing the author’s bona fides.
The bulk of Big Intel is two parallel — and occasionally intertwined — histories. The one is a tale of spies, spying, and subversion; the evolution of militant Marxist-Leninism into cultural Marxism as manifest in contemporary woke culture. The
