Fox News first reported late last month that Darrell Blocker, a retired 28-year CIA veteran, had emerged as a leading candidate for CIA director in a future Biden administration. However, neither the Biden transition team nor Blocker has commented on that possibility, with Blocker noting only that Biden had come to him for advice, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), which noted his nickname is “the spy whisperer.”
Rise to CIA Inner Circle
Blocker converted to Judaism just three years ago, but has been associated with the Jewish community since his college years. The JTA reported he closely identified with what it called “the truth-telling spies,” Joshua and Caleb, who in the Book of Exodus were the only two of the 12 sent by Moses to scout the land of Canaan prior to the Hebrews’ arrival to give an optimistic report about their chances of success if they settled there.
Blocker’s father was in the US Air Force until Blocker was 11, when the family settled in Augusta, Georgia. Blocker studied at the University of Georgia, where he found Judaism could answer many of his questions that Christianity could not. After, he joined the Air Force himself, becoming an analyst for four years from 1987 to 1990 and being awarded the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. He applied for a job at the CIA in 1989. He told the JTA his entrance essay gave a grim estimation of success for the First Intifada, a Palestinian mass-uprising against Israeli occupation then underway.
“It was the Intifada, so of course I wrote about that,” he told JTA. “And mostly along the lines of every nation in history that has fought and won actual territory, actual ground, them giving it back - it just hasn’t happened.”
According to JTA, Blocker served in 10 countries in the CIA, including Senegal, Uganda and Pakistan, eventually becoming chief of station for the CIA’s Africa Division. While on station in Uganda in the 1990s, his musical skills made him a local celebrity. He spent his final nine years with the agency as an executive in the Senior Intelligence Service, the CIA’s global leadership team, and is known in the intelligence community as the “spy whisperer.”
From Spy to Mercenary
According to his LinkedIn profile, Blocker left the CIA in 2018, becoming national security program manager at Counter-Terrorism Watch, which provides training and advice to police forces and a contributor to ABC News shortly after.
Last year, Blocker became Chief Operating Officer at Multi Operational Security Agency Intelligence Company (MOSAIC), a private security contractor run by Tony Schiena, a former South African spy billed by the UK Telegraph as “the world’s most highly trained covert operative.”
A 2014 Vice documentary on private militaries called “Superpower for Hire” focused on MOSAIC’s work in Venezuela running security for an elite client: Paolo Fidanzo (billed as Pablo in the film), a tech entrepreneur who founded MO Technologies, which is headquartered in Bogota, Colombia, and Miami, Florida.
Biden’s Other Options
Biden’s team is purporting itself to be forming a government that “looks like America,” and many of his picks so far have been demographic firsts in their positions, including Avril Haines, a former CIA deputy director who Biden wants to be the first female US director of national intelligence, and Gen. Lloyd Austin, a Raytheon board member and former commander of US Central Command who Biden wants to be the first Black secretary of defense. Blocker would be the CIA’s first Black director and its third Jewish director, if he were posted to the position.
Blocker isn’t the only person rumored to be under consideration for the position of CIA director, though. Politico reported that Tom Donilon, who served as White House national security adviser from 2010 to 2013 - when Biden was US vice president under Barack Obama - and Jeh Johnson, who ran the Department of Homeland Security under Obama, were also being considered.
Another name that has come up is Michael Morell, who was acting CIA director in 2011 and again from 2012 to 2013, but leading Democrats in the Senate have said they would oppose Morell’s nomination because of his denial of the CIA’s torture program and claims that so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” are not torture.
Blocker’s thoughts on enhanced interrogation are not known. However, comments by him about some of the CIA’s other ignominious activities suggest he would take a detached approach.
‘All Of That Happened 40 Years Ago’
During a 2019 Q&A with a prominent Los Angeles luxury real estate broker, Blocker told a story about how he was challenged on the CIA’s record by a student during a recruitment fair at Norfolk State University, a historically Black college in southern Virginia.
Biden is reportedly considering veteran CIA operative Darrell Blocker to lead the agency.
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 30, 2020
Here, Blocker recalls recruiting at a historically black college and being challenged by a student about the CIA's record of criminality.
His responses are interesting to say the least. pic.twitter.com/ZZWMOa9I2y
“He walks up and he looks at me, and he’s like, ‘How can you work for them? Do you know that they did experiments on Black soldiers?’ And I said, ‘Yup. And we tried to kill [Cuban leader Fidel] Castro, and we mined the harbors of Nicaragua.’ I said, ‘All of that happened 40 years ago. If you want to talk about 40 years ago I can talk history with you, but if you want to talk about the options that you have within the CIA, which are amazing - listen, it’s the best life you’re ever going to live.”
He then said he told the student the one thing he wanted from a CIA recruit was integrity. “But don’t you guys lie, cheat and steal?” the student asked him, the same description of the agency given by US Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo earlier this year. “And I said, ‘Yes, but never to each other and never against US interests,” Blocker recalled.
