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In case you have been asleep since 1947…

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/brennan-joking-when-he-says-cia-spies-doesn-t-steal-n529426

Former CIA officers are expressing exasperation over CIA director John Brennan’s recent remark that “we don’t steal secrets.”

“Is he joking?” John Sipher, who spent decades spying in sensitive overseas posts and retired in 2014 as a senior manager, wrote in a column published Wednesday on a national security web site, the Cipher Brief.

In fact, Sipher and other former CIA officers say, stealing secrets is the CIA’s “job one” overseas.

Brennan told National Public Radio last week that he objects to the idea that the CIA engages in theft.

“We uncover. We discover. We reveal. We obtain. We elicit. We solicit — all of that,” he said.

John Maguire, a retired CIA officer who led operations in Baghdad, told NBC News that Brennan’s comments “make the U.S. look dumb.”

“Every aspect of what the CIA does overseas is illegal,” he said. “We don’t ‘solicit’ secrets — we steal them. What does he call breaking into an embassy? It’s absurd on its face.”

Sipher wrote that Brennan avoids the term “espionage,” and “does not view the CIA as an espionage service. Wow.”…