US President Joe Biden on Friday (8 July) thanked employees on the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Company for warning the world about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine, and hailed what he known as the “quiet bravery” of America’s spies.
Marking the CIA’s seventy fifth anniversary, Biden mentioned he had been concerned with the company for 52 of these years, first as a junior senator on a 1975 committee set as much as examine thoughts management experiments and different abuses by the company.
Intelligence gathered by the CIA had uncovered Putin’s plans and allowed Washington to warn different nations in regards to the conflict, he mentioned.
“It was due to the unbelievable work of our intelligence professionals that we have been capable of forewarn the world what Vladimir Putin was planning in Ukraine,” he mentioned. “Exposing Putin’s playbook punched a big gap within the pretense, and discredited his lies about what we have been doing in Ukraine.”
Earlier than Russia’s invasion on 24 February, as Russia massed greater than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, Putin repeatedly accused the US and different Western powers of intentionally making a situation to lure Moscow into conflict.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “particular operation.”
Biden’s speech was a stark distinction to that of former President Donald Trump, who made his first speech as president on the CIA headquarters, the place he criticized the information media and his political opponents in entrance of the “wall of stars” memorializing dozens of CIA brokers who died on obligation.
Biden famous that two stars had been added to the wall this 12 months.
“Your bodily well being and well-being are critically essential to me and to your management right here on the CIA,” Biden mentioned, in a potential reference to the Havana Syndrome, a collection of anomalous well being incidents that has affected some 200 US diplomats and intelligence officers worldwide.
