John O. Brennan: evaluation

Transcript context

…How much do you think about the much earlier history of the CIA? For instance, it came out some while ago that the CIA supported modern art and abstract expressionism. This was seen as a counterweight to the more communist tradition of mural paintings. Do you look back and think, “Gee, that was crazy. We would never do anything like that”? Or do you look back and think, “Well, that made sense for the time, but times change”? How do you view the earlier CIA? Well, you pointed out one aspect of earlier CIA. There’s a lot of other aspects of the early CIA, in terms of toppling regimes and actually shaping developments overseas during the Cold War, when I think Washington really felt we were in an existential challenge and competition with the Soviet Union. I think United States culture is one of its strongest calling cards around the world, and I do believe that we need to enhance the propagation of our culture — political, social, other. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have leveraged it enough because even in places like Iran and China and Russia, so many American entertainers and so many aspects of culture really are very much admired and embraced by the populace. To the extent that the CIA and the State Department and other organizations can help to extend that culture worldwide, I think all for the better. I think we should be doing more of that rather than trying to conduct these different types of covert operations to change the course of events overseas in ways that usually do not lead to the outcome that we want. There’s a famous Haitian proverb which goes, “The constitution is paper. The bayonet is steel.” Agree or disagree?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.