弗吉尼亚州兰利-总统乔·拜登在周五对中情局的访问中称赞中情局是“我们国家安全的基石”，这也是支持广泛情报工作的一部分乌克兰美国对俄国的抵抗。
拜登纪念了该机构在二战后成立75周年。在弗吉尼亚州的总部，他感谢中情局在乌克兰的工作，称美国的情报人员是“世界上最好的”。
关于俄罗斯将在2月份入侵乌克兰的预测为情报机构提供了公开支持，这些情报机构经常受到批评，并面临着提供有关中国和俄罗斯的见解的新压力。拜登授权开展一场前所未有的运动，解密这些发现，这些发现被认为有助于建立对俄罗斯严厉制裁和加强对基辅军事支持的支持。
“多亏了我们情报专业人员令人难以置信的工作，我们才得以让全世界知道弗拉基米尔·普京在乌克兰的计划，”拜登站在该机构的纪念墙前告诉观众。
拜登来到白宫时有着接受情报简报的长期历史，他曾担任过八年的副总统和36年的特拉华州参议员，在那里他领导参议院外交关系委员会，并在20世纪70年代情报委员会成立时任职。他说，离开副总统职位后，他最怀念的事情是阅读总统的每日简报，这是情报界顶级收集和分析的汇编。
“我在你的机构工作了不到75年，但是——我讨厌承认——52年了，”拜登对聚集在一起的官员们笑着说。“这很难说。”
在美国前总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)一再质疑情报调查结果并攻击他所谓的对手“深层状态”后，拜登与中情局(CIA)和其他机构重建了更传统的关系。
尽管如此，去年在阿富汗问题上仍存在紧张局势，在美国支持的政府倒台期间，塔利班军队占领了喀布尔，政府内部相互指责。现任和前任情报官员疯狂地疏散在二十年战争中帮助过美国的阿富汗人。
前中情局官员道格拉斯·伦敦(Douglas London)近年来一直批评该机构的方向，他说，俄罗斯和乌克兰的战争表明，中情局正在“再次成为精英间谍机构”。
《招募者:间谍活动和美国情报的失落艺术》一书的作者伦敦说，“乌克兰确实促进了它的救赎之路。”
尽管如此，美国情报界低估了乌克兰抵抗俄罗斯入侵的能力，并错误地预测乌克兰总统弗拉基米尔·泽伦斯基(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)的政府将在几周内倒台。
这些机构正在审查他们如何评估外国政府所谓的“战斗意愿”——美国去年在阿富汗也误判了这个问题，当时美国认为总统阿什拉夫·加尼(Ashraf Ghani)的政府将坚持数月，结果加尼逃离，塔利班接管喀布尔，而美国正试图撤离。
参议院情报和武装部队委员会成员、缅因州独立议员安格斯·金(Angus King)表示，他已敦促情报官员审查“一年内发生两次重大故障”的原因。
“入侵前的情报质量非常好，绝对是世界级的，”金在最近的一次采访中说。"问题是评估入侵后会发生什么。"
自战争开始以来，情报部门的大部分工作都是保密的。美国官员透露，美国正在向乌克兰提供信息，乌克兰军队反过来利用这些信息打击俄罗斯的高价值目标，包括旗舰莫斯科。
白宫试图压制美国直接帮助乌克兰攻击俄罗斯的说法，因为担心普京可能会将这些建议视为升级。拜登曾表示，他希望避免“第三次世界大战”。
随着乌克兰在战争的头几周击退了俄罗斯军队，在华盛顿立法者的压力下，拜登政府放松了情报共享规定，现在向乌克兰人提供更多信息。自战争开始以来，它还承诺了70亿美元的武器系统、弹药和其他军事援助。
乌克兰官员和观察人士表示，在这场严重依赖炮火的艰苦消耗战中，乌克兰仍远远落后于俄罗斯。美国情报部门认为，普京没有放弃他最初的目标，即在他眼中“中和”乌克兰。
美国还参与支持乌克兰和其他盟友的网络防御，以对抗俄罗斯攻击和窃取数字系统的能力。由于预计普京可能会利用美国对乌克兰的支持作为另一场反对美国选举的运动的理由，各机构正在关注俄罗斯对选举的影响或干预。
“最终，美国的考量是:我们希望尽一切努力支持乌克兰人，同时避免与俄罗斯人发生直接冲突，”戴尔·巴克纳说，他是一名退休的美国陆军绿色贝雷帽(Green Beret)，现领导安保公司全球卫士(Global Guardian)。
Biden marks CIA's 75 years as 'bedrock' of national security
LANGLEY, Virginia -- President Joe Biden lauded the CIA as the “bedrock of our national security” during a Friday visit to the agency, which also is part of the wide-ranging intelligence effort to support Ukraine's resistance against Russia.
Biden marked the 75th anniversary of the agency's founding after World War II. While at the headquarters in Virginia, he thanked the CIA for its work in Ukraine and called America's intelligence officers “the best in the world.”
Predictions that Russia would invade Ukraine in February provided a public boost for spy agencies that are often criticized and facing new pressure to deliver insights on China and Russia. Biden authorized an unprecedented campaign to declassify findings that have been credited with helping build support for severe Russia sanctions and the ramp-up of military support to Kyiv.
“It was thanks to the incredible work of our intelligence professionals that we were able to inform the world what Vladimir Putin was planning in Ukraine,” Biden told the audience while standing in front of the agency's memorial wall.
Biden came to the White House with a long history of receiving intelligence briefings, having served eight years as vice president and 36 years as a senator from Delaware, where he led the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and served on the Intelligence Committee when it was first created in the 1970s. The thing he missed most after leaving the vice presidency, he said, was reading the President’s Daily Brief, the compilation of the intelligence community’s top collection and analysis.
“I’ve been involved with your agency for not 75 years, but — I hate to admit it — 52 years,” Biden said to laughs from the officers gathered. “It’s very hard to say.”
Biden has reestablished a more traditional relationship with the CIA and other agencies after former President Donald Trump repeatedly cast doubt on intelligence findings and attacked what he alleged was a “deep state” of opponents.
Still, there were tensions last year concerning Afghanistan, with finger-pointing across the government during the fall of the American-backed government as the Taliban overran Kabul. Current and former intelligence officials worked frantically to evacuate Afghans who had helped the U.S. during the two-decade war.
Douglas London, a former CIA officer who has criticized the agency's direction in recent years, said the Russia-Ukraine war has shown the CIA is on its way to becoming “an elite spy service again.”
“Its path to redemption has really been facilitated by Ukraine,” said London, author of “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence.”
Still, the U.S. intelligence community underestimated Ukraine’s ability to resist the Russian invasion and wrongly predicted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government would fall within weeks.
The agencies are reviewing how they assess a foreign government's perceived “will to fight” — an issue the U.S. also misjudged in Afghanistan last year when it believed President Ashraf Ghani's government would hold out for months, only for Ghani to flee and the Taliban to take Kabul as the U.S. was trying to evacuate.
Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who sits on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees, said he's pushed intelligence officials to review why there were “two significant breakdowns in a year.”
“The quality of the intelligence pre-invasion was excellent and absolutely world-class,” King said in a recent interview. “The problem was the assessment of what would happen after the invasion.”
Most of the intelligence community's work since the war began has been kept secret. U.S. officials have disclosed that it is providing Ukraine with information that Ukrainian forces have in turn used to hit high-value Russian targets, including the flagship Moskva.
The White House has tried to tamp down suggestions that the U.S. is directly helping Ukraine attack Russia out of concern that Putin may see those suggestions as escalations. Biden has said he wants to avoid a “third world war.”
As Ukraine repelled Russian forces in the first weeks of the war, and under pressure from lawmakers in Washington, the Biden administration loosened its rules on sharing intelligence and is now providing more information to the Ukrainians. It has also committed $7 billion in weapons systems, ammunition and other military aid since the war began.
Ukrainian officials and observers say Ukraine still is vastly outgunned by Russia in what's become a grinding war of attrition heavily reliant on artillery fire. Putin is believed by U.S. intelligence to have not given up on his initial aims to “neutralize” Ukraine in his eyes.
The U.S. also is involved in shoring up the cyber defenses of Ukraine and other allies against Russia's capabilities to hack and steal from digital systems. And agencies are on watch for election influence or interference from Russia amid expectations that Putin may use U.S. support for Ukraine as justification for another campaign against an American election.
“Ultimately, the U.S. calculus is this: We want to do everything we can to support the Ukrainians while avoiding a direct conflict with the Russians,” said Dale Buckner, a retired U.S. Army Green Beret who now leads the security firm Global Guardian.
