Why is Susan Miller Doing Media?

Susan Miller

Who is Susan Miller? She is a recently retired CIA officer who entered on duty in September 1985, began her career in the Directorate of Intelligence and then, sometime after 1989, changed her career path and moved to the Directorate of Operations, where she spent most of career, including a stint as the Chief of Station in Israel. How do I know this? Well, not only am I relying on press reports… Susan and I were in the same Career Trainee (CT) class. I will let Perplexity tell you about the CT program:

The CIA Career Trainee (CT) Program was the Agency’s long‑standing entry‑level pipeline for young professional officers, designed to select, train, and place people with high potential into substantive intelligence careers (operations, analysis, support, etc.). Historically, it has been an intensive, multi‑stage program combining classroom instruction, tradecraft and leadership training, and early on‑the‑job assignments before trainees move into permanent roles.

By way of background, there are two other members of my CT class who have become public figures — Valerie Plame and Steven Hall. Anyone who has seen the movie, Fair Game, knows who Valerie is and how she was betrayed by the George W Bush administration. Steve Hall, apart from spending 30 years with the CIA as a case officer, was one of the 51 former intelligence officials who signed the now infamous October 19, 2020 open letter suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” That letter is now widely acknowledged to have been wrong on the core point that the laptop was likely part of a Russian influence operation, as subsequent reporting and forensic analysis have shown that the laptop was genuine.

I am curious why Susan is now making the media rounds as a pundit. I know how I got started on that path… Ten months after leaving the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, the press rep for the office recommended me to his brother, who was a booker at CNN, to offer commentary on the capture of Carlos the Jackal in August 1994.

Since retiring in the late spring or early summer of 2025, Susan has made quite a splash. I first saw her on Afshin Rattansi’s RT program, Going Underground, where she made some news. During the interview with Afshin she said that the CIA has cooperated with, and at times “relied on,” Al Qaeda–linked and ISIS‑linked elements in West Asia as tools against Iran and the Assad government, rather than treating them solely as enemies. Here is one of the quotes from that program:

Afshin: ‘Don’t you think ordinary New Yorkers would have a problem with that [working with Syria’s former Al Qaeda leader Al-Sharaa/Al-Jolani]?

Former CIA Tel Aviv Station Chief: ‘If we worked with them, we would know what they were doing better, that’s for sure. And understand it. If the plan is for us to work with them, to work on a security agreement, which we have done with enemies before.’

She also said that “CIA and Al‑Qaeda worked closely in Iraq and Syria” in the context of the anti‑Assad effort, indicating deliberate cooperation with Al Qaeda‑linked factions as part of the broader campaign to topple Bashar al‑Assad. And she admitted that the U.S. and Israeli services have “cooperated with ISIS and Al‑Qaeda” in West Asia, particularly when these groups were useful as counterweights to Iran and its allies.

Wow! She’s not passing on information that she heard from a third-party… She is speaking from experience. What has really caught my eye was my belated discovery of her appearance on CNN in July, where she threw some shade at Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard:

Retired CIA official Susan Miller, an author of the agency’s 2017 intelligence report on Russian election meddling, is vowing to fight any potential criminal charges brought by the Trump administration. . . .

“My team and I, just yesterday, had a few drinks and talked about that, and talked about what lawyers we’d be looking for, if that happens,” Miller told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” on Friday.

Pushing back against Gabbard’s accusations, Miller said that no one – including then-President Barack Obama or then-CIA Director John Brennan – had told her team what conclusion to reach in their report. “Absolutely not,” she said. She added that she and her team would have quit if they had faced such pressure.

Miller said the intelligence that helped them reach their conclusion “was extremely sound and it was verified.” Miller also said her team briefed Trump at the time.

Pretty sad and despicable. I knew Susan when she was young and relatively innocent. Now she appears to be a proud member of the Deep State by virtue of participating in the lie that Russia interfered in the 2016 US Presidential election with the express purpose to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order. No! She got that wrong… It was the CIA and other members of the US intelligence community that did that, starting in the summer of 2015. The CIA, the FBI and NSA, as well as a host of foreign intelligence outfits, conspired to paint Donald Trump as an agent of Russia. It was a lie.

The fact that Susan was apparently selected by then CIA Director Brennan to lead the team that wrote that piece of propaganda — i.e., Assessing Russian Intentions and Activities in Recent US Elections — tells you everything you need to know.