The other day I wrote a post about Dopey Joe in the Middle East. In it I stated that just because the CIA said Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Jamal Kashoggi killed that doesn’t mean it is true. I stand by that, and today, I would like to add another incident to my fat stack of reasons why the Central Intelligence Agency is incompetent and unreliable. That is, an object was found in Virginia by a secret location and that object may, or may not, be a noose. The Director issued a statement condemning racism.

Mind you, there is no evidence of racism or a noose, except maybe in the racist minds of the folks who spend all day worrying about racism such that you worry that they may, or may not be, secret racists themselves.

Here is how the New York Times began the article on the possible noose:

The C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, issued a warning to the agency’s work force last week after what appeared to be a noose was found outside a secret facility used by the agency in Virginia, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the message, Mr. Burns said that racism and racist symbols would not be tolerated in the agency.

Questions surround the incident. The object was found near a small agency facility located in a building that houses businesses and other organizations. Some people briefed on the incident said it was not entirely clear that the object was even meant to be a noose, or if whoever placed it there knew that the C.I.A. secretly operated in the building.

There is nothing in these paragraphs that is entirely clear. Not all nooses or ropes are racist. Sometimes a garage pull is just a garage pull. Remember Bubba Wallace, the noose story, and the way that NASCAR damaged its brand? That event wasn’t even three years ago. Doesn’t someone at the CIA have an intact memory? From ESPN, here is the sum of the story:

NASCAR on Thursday completed its investigation into the garage pull rope formed as a noose that was found in Bubba Wallace’s garage at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, with president Steve Phelps saying “the noose was real” and “our initial reaction was to protect our driver.”

NASCAR released a photo of the noose that was found in the garage of the No. 43 team.

On Tuesday, the FBI determined that Wallace was not the victim of a hate crime and that the noose had been on that garage door since October 2019.

There were also nooses found in an Oakland, California park. The Mayor Libby Schaaf won’t have that in Oakland:

But she knows that the ropes, sometimes described as straps or swings, were not intended to be nooses, because the (black) man who hung them has made that clear:

Victor Sengbe, who is black, told KGO-TV that the ropes were part of a rigging that he and his friends used as part of a larger swing system. He also shared video of the swing in use.

“Out of the dozen and hundreds and thousands of people that walked by, no one has thought that it looked anywhere close to a noose. Folks have used it for exercise. It was really a fun addition to the park that we tried to create,” Sengbe said.

“It’s unfortunate that a genuine gesture of just wanting to have a good time got misinterpreted into something so heinous,” he told the station.

Reasons and intentions don’t matter to Libby. Only feelings matter. Libby is a dolt. See for yourself:

Yes, Libby is your typical, Liberal, white woman. But what is William Burns excuse.

CIA Director William J. Burns was never in the military. Maybe he was never a Boy Scout. But, surely in all of the CIA there is someone who was a Boy Scout, a sailor or a knitter. All of these endeavors use a slip not/hangman’s knot/collar.

As the New York Times article makes clear, the CIA is terrified of the racism label:

A report on diversity released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last year found that 12.3 percent of civilian employees in the various intelligence agencies were Black. Overall, the percentage of minorities increased between 2019 and 2020, according to the report, but at the most senior pay levels, Black representation was far lower, making up just 6.5 percent of the ranks.

Former C.I.A. officials said that Mr. Burns had made efforts to give Black employees prominent roles in senior jobs, but work is left to be done.

There are very good people of every race out there, Maybe that don’t want to be associated with the CIA. Maybe they are offended by the condescension of Burns’ statement:

“C.I.A. has zero tolerance for actions or symbols of hatred and treats any such incidents with the utmost seriousness,” said Susan Miller, a spokeswoman for the agency, who declined to comment further on Mr. Burns’s message. “Our values and our vital national security mission demand that we uphold nothing less than the highest standards of inclusiveness and safety.”

Change the name to Central Agency. There is no intelligence there, at all.

Featured Image: U.S. Army Cadet Command/Flickr/Cropped/Creative Commons