Tangle - CIA Director Ratcliffe’s trip to Russia.

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

On Tuesday, August 25, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow, Russia, for the first publicly disclosed time to meet with Russian intelligence officials. While the CIA has not shared the official purpose of the trip, Ratcliffe reportedly cautioned Russia against attacking North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states. The visit also comes after four and a half years of war between Russia and Ukraine with little progress in peace discussions. Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle’s podcast membership!Bring back shame?On Friday, Associate Editor Carina Pacheco explored the cultural shift toward “normalizing” behaviors once seen as weird or unacceptable. She wrote:I shudder to think of the mud that so many good, necessary emotions have been dragged through to get to the altar of normalization, chief among them shame and embarrassment... They form the bedrock of the shared norms and values that keep society functional. Varying degrees of risk-taking and independent decision-making — and failure — are essential to establishing character and creating the foundation of self-trust and resilience that everyone needs to truly grow.Check out Carina’s full essay here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: Will Putin attack a NATO country in the next two years? Let us know. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. This is Tangle. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with camping tips for toddlers last week. I got to close the loop on it. We had a blast. my brave mother joined. Everything went basically as well as it could have gone. So much fun.

The only little hiccup, 2 a.m. in the tent, sound machine dies. I wake up when the sound machine dies and immediately know, oh no, my son's going to be waking up any moment. And then we didn't have the rain fly on because it's beautiful night in the Delaware water gap. and this massive full moon just comes up over the tree line, lights the tent. It's like it is as if somebody has turned on the lights in the bedroom. Omri, my son wakes up. I hear him rustling around like, no, go back to sleep. And after a brief moment, he just goes, snacky.

And I thought, oh, God, we've done it now. So we were up from about 2 a.m. The 4 a.m. until I could finally get him to fall back asleep. And he was cooked the next day. But it was so fun. It was great. Awesome trip.

I employed some of the tips people sent in. So I appreciate all you guys writing in. And yeah, today we have a different kind of trip that we're covering. CIA director John Rackcliffe took a mysterious trip to Russia. And there's a lot of speculation and reporting about what exactly happened, why he was there. We also have a reader question about defund the police and an under-the-radar story about Trump's deportation efforts. It's a great episode. Joining me today is Audrey Moorhead, and I'm going to pass it to her to get us started. Thanks, Isaac. First up, we have today's

quick hits. Number one, President Donald Trump announced Venezuela had agreed to allow the United States to take control of approximately 65 billion barrels of its oil reserves. Venezuelan interim president, Delci Rodriguez, said the deal will generate an estimated $209 billion annually for Venezuela. Number two, the U.S. and Iran exchanged strikes for the first time in one month, with the U.S. attacking Iranian rocket launchers in the Strait of Hormuz and Iran launching missiles at a Jordanian air base housing U.S. troops. Number three, the death toll from flash floods in Nepal and China last week surpassed 900, with over 4,700 people still missing. Separately, flooding in the Grand Canyon caused significant infrastructure damage and killed at least one person

with an estimated 15 people still missing. Number four, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh suggested that the central bank could raise interest rates if inflation does not move toward the bank's 2% target, though he expressed optimism about the health of the broader economy. Number five, Icelanders voted 52.8% to 47.2% against a proposal to restart negotiations over the country joining the European Union. We still have a whole lot of questions about what the CIA director was doing in Moscow, and it turns out we're not the only ones. The Wall Street Journal reports today, even some senior White House officials did not know anything about the trip. The journal adds,

it was President Trump who personally dispatched his spy chief to Moscow and that he kept the need to know circle about this trip extremely tight. On Tuesday, August 25th, CIA director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow, Russia for the first publicly disclosed time to meet with Russian intelligence officials. While the CIA has not shared the official purpose of the trip, Radcliffe reportedly cautioned Russia against attacking North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO member states. The visit also comes after four and a half years of war between Russia and Ukraine with little progress and peace discussions. For more context, in November 2021, then CIA director William Burns visited Moscow to warn Russia not to attack Ukraine,

the last known visit to the capital by a CIA director until last week. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three months later in February 2022, and efforts by the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as other nations, to facilitate an end to the conflict have failed to produce a breakthrough. As peace talks have stalled, Putin has issued new threats against NATO countries supporting Ukraine, and some U.S. officials have raised concerns that he would consider a limited attack on a member state to test the alliance's unity. Politico reported that Ratcliffe specifically highlighted the Baltic states, Estonia,

Latvia, and Lithuania as countries the United States seize his potential targets. Russia and Ukraine have also ramped up drone attacks in recent weeks, and Ukrainian officials have suggested that new Russian ground offensives are being planned. In addition to his warnings against a wider European conflict, Ratcliffe reportedly proposed a meeting between President Donald Trump, Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to revamp negotiations. Separately, a top Ukrainian official told local reporters that new talks between Ukraine and Russia could begin in September. President Trump called Ratcliffe's Moscow visit semi-routine and part of his

administration's efforts to facilitate a peace deal. In a separate interview, the president said he was not concerned at all about Russia attacking a NATO country. Next up, you'll hear views from the right-left and abroad about Ratcliffe's visit and the broader state of the Ukraine-Russia. war. Then I'll pass it back to executive editor Isaac Saul for his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. First up, what the right is saying. Some on the right say Ratcliffe's visit should be the start of more demonstrations of NATO's resolve. Others suggest the true purpose of the meeting is still ambiguous. In the Washington examiner, Ivana Stradner and Mark Montgomery argued Putin is testing NATO because he thinks the West will flinch. CIA director John Ratcliffe's

visit to Moscow this week comes as U.S. intelligence warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be prepared to escalate against NATO. Washington must use this moment to send a simple message to Moscow. Russia cannot attack the West from the shadows and expect the West to say silent. Russia's campaign against Western Europe is already visible. In Germany, multiple explosive-filled drones resembling the drones used by Russia and Ukraine have been found around the Leipzig Airport. In Britain, the UK's National Cybersecurity Center has warned that Russian groups continue to target British organizations. Russia is testing NATO, and it is time to stop absorbing the blows and start imposing costs.

The West needs to close the gaps Moscow is exploiting, and make clear that every provocation carries a price. Washington is sending mixed signals. On one hand, the CIA director is warning Moscow not to test NATO. On the other hand, Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of war for policy, is pressing the alliance to take more responsibility, as Washington considers reducing. its military troops in Europe further. If we believe Putin may test NATO, this is no time for ambiguity. In the telegraph, John Bolton called Ratcliffe's visit,

classic Trumpian political theater. No one buys Donald Trump's initial ploy that the trip was semi-routine, a palpably duplicitous effort to conceal something more substantive. Leaks then emerged that Ratcliffe sought to warn Russia against attacking NATO members. Increasingly hostile Kremlin behavior has worried alliance leader. What had seemed to be a Kremlin hybrid war against NATO was looking decidedly less hybrid. Perhaps Ratcliffe wanted to urge the Kremlin not to continue sharing intelligence with Iran or military assistance that endangered U.S. and Israeli forces.

Or perhaps Ratcliffe wanted to talk about Trump's announcement of an economic deeday against Iranian trade and finance and urge Russian cooperation with U.S. efforts. None of these publicly mooted rationales are satisfactory. Intelligence chiefs do talk to foreign counterparts, but also, almost always to allies or close partners, rarely hostile states. If sensitive matters of state are involved, countries have foreign ministers so they can talk to one another. Now what the left is saying. Many on the left say the U.S. must remain a staunch defender of NATO amid Putin's latest threats. Others say the U.S. and Europe must make Russia's escalatory tactics costlier. In the Atlantic,

Thomas Wright asked, why did John Ratcliffe go to Moscow? Ratcliffe's visit comes at one of the most difficult periods in the war for the Kremlin. Thanks to its drone systems, Ukraine has been able to strike military targets and oil infrastructure deep inside Russia, while also hindering Moscow's advance on the battlefield, turning the front into a killbox in which anything that moves is struck within minutes. Despite making little progress, Russia has continued to take heavy losses. Russia's weakness could be making Putin more reckless, but Putin may see attacking a NATO country as an unprecedented opportunity to break the alliance by manufacturing a crisis in which

the United States fails to act. On his way to Moscow, Ratcliffe stopped in Latvia. Today, the Latvian Prime Minister called the trip a very good signal, which seemed to imply that Ratcliffe had been there seeking to bolster European security. If the CIA director carried a warning with him, it should have been an unambiguous one. Any attack on NATO territory would bring in the United States. Trump might not want to make that type of commitment, but it may be necessary to ensure that Putin never concludes that he is an opportunity to start a war that breaks NATO. The Bloomberg editorial board said NATO and the EU must make Russia's hybrid war costlier. Government and intelligence officials in Germany and the UK, among others, say attacks from Russia now occur daily. Because they are small-scale,

deniable and rarely lethal, they get filed under the anodyne label hybrid warfare, which sounds like a problem to be managed. They're far more serious than that, and they require a more concerted response. While panic would just serve the Kremlin's goals, passivity isn't the answer either. As with conventional deterrence, allies must demonstrate that attacks come with costs. Europe needs faster, more layered counter-dron defenses, at airports, ports, and logistics hubs that combine detection, electronic warfare, network disruption, and physical interception. Countering hybrid action also requires more seamless intelligence sharing. NATO and the European Union have moved too slowly with too little coordination for a threat that changes by the month.

For its part, the U.S. shouldn't dismiss Russia's hybrid campaign as a mere European nuisance. Russian drones have probed bases housing U.S. forces and sites associated with U.S. nuclear weapons. The larger target is American credibility. Finally, what writers abroad are saying? Some riders abroad question whether Ratcliffe's visit will have the desired effect. Others suggest the Trump administration is offering Putin an off-ramp. In the key post, Timothy Ash wrote Putin tests NATO's Article 5 defense. Putin's war in Ukraine is not going well, as Ukraine has stabilized the front lines and is now

increasingly successful in taking the war to Russia via deep-strike drone attacks on refineries and online retailer warehouses in Russia. Putin is worried and is escalating to try and force NATO to pull support for Ukraine and force Ukraine into a peace on his terms. What was the specific intel that the U.S. received on Russia's plans to attack NATO or escalate in Ukraine that prompted the Trump administration that is typically given the Putin regime a past benefit of the doubt on all things Ukraine related to dispatch Ratcliffe to Moscow. Presumably, Ratcliffe was sent to Moscow to read the Riot Act to the Kremlin and reassure that the U.S. would still stand by its allies under NATO's Article 5 defense. That message surely will have been dulled by the fact that President Trump

seems to have gone overboard in recent years in questioning, challenging, and undermining that very defense. I think Ratcliffe flying into Russia via Latvia was meant to send a strong message and perhaps indicates that the specific threat was to the Baltic states. But the real question here is if Bill Burns' trip to Moscow as CIA director in 2021, to deliver a similar warning to the Kremlin, not to invade Ukraine, was ignored. What's to think that Putin will not just ignore Ratcliffe this time? In The Independent, Peter Frankapan explored the real reason the CIA boss John Ratcliffe made a secret trip to Moscow. For some time, the U.S. has been concerned that the circle around Vladimir Putin does what most tight-knit circles do around powerful autocrats.

Deliver news that the ruler wants to hear. Bratcliffe urged the head of Russia's intelligence agency Alexander Bortnakov to tell the Russian president what was really happening. Not only on the front lines nor even behind them where long-range strikes by Ukrainian missiles and drones have devastated Russia's economy by targeting refineries, warehouses, and more. These are no paper cuts. They have done and will do more serious damage.

If the U.S. assessment is that the storm clouds that are forming, are so bleak that nothing is off the table. Then Radcliffe's shadowy visit makes more sense. By going to Moscow in person, Ratcliffe was able to make sure his message would be heard properly in a way that would have been harder to achieve otherwise. By sitting Bortnikov down and explaining how the U.S. sees things, offering to help,

and warning that if Russia does not do a deal soon with Ukraine, the ramifications will be both unpredictable and seismic, Radcliffe was offering an off-ramp. That's it for views from the right, left, and abroad. Now I'll pass it back to Isaac for his take. All right, that is hit four with the left and the right and some writers from a broader saying, which brings us to my take.

News of Ratcliffe's visit has me reflecting on three lessons we should all collectively have learned about the Russia-Ukraine war by now. The last time a CIA director made a trip like this to Russia was in 2021. William J. Burns, the CIA director during the Biden administration took the trip with the hope of deterring Russian officials

from launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Three months later, Russia invaded. At the time, members of the military establishment and legacy media warned up and down that Putin would invade Ukraine. Yet heterodox independent analysts and journalists weren't buying it. They accused establishment writers of fear-mongering and insisted Putin wasn't stupid enough

to try something so self-destructive. The invasion provided, a good reminder that the mainstream consensus opinion is often the mainstream consensus opinion because it reflects a shared reality that mature, sober people are living in. After this visit, there's a lot more uncertainty about what the Russian autocrat is capable of. You'll notice that for now, very few people are climbing out on a limb to say he'd never attack NATO. It seems like a genuine possibility, and it should. Perhaps everyone has finally come to terms with the man we are dealing with.

And that's lesson number one. The Western consensus about Putin is often accurate. On the other side of the coin, that consensus isn't very confident that an attack on a NATO ally would guarantee a response from the United States. This uncertainty, too, is new and uncharted territory. Across both his terms, President Trump has distanced the United States from its commitment to defending NATO. He has successfully pushed European nations to contribute more resources to the alliance

under threat of a U.S. withdrawal. In doing so, he's been explicit that he wouldn't automatically defend our NATO allies, even in the case of a Russian attack. You might remember February 2024 when then candidate Trump recalled telling NATO allies that he would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want to NATO allies who haven't spent enough on alliance defense. No, I would not protect you. That posture was effective at pushing NATO allies to contribute more to the alliance, which is good. It reduces our burden and increases the overall security of NATO. Generally speaking, unpredictability, that black hole of what will he do, has always been a weapon in Trump's foreign policy arsenal. The downside, though, is that this tactic tempts Russia

to test whether an attack on a NATO nation would provoke a full-force response from the alliance. As NATO Secretary General Jen Sultenberg said back in 2024, any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the United States, and puts American and European soldiers at risk. Trump was insisting last week that Russia won't attack, and maybe he's right. But Ratcliffe's visit and reporting from across the globe suggests a much different behind-the-scenes understanding of what Putin may actually try. And if Putin were sure about how we'd respond, he'd never consider it in the first place. And that's lesson number two. Being unpredictable is a

always an advantage. All of this comes at a critical moment in the war. Roughly a year ago, Ukraine's position on the battlefield appeared to be slipping. Now, Russia is facing heavy losses and constant incursions of Ukrainian drones in its airspace. Last month, Ratcliffe shared the astounding statistic that the average life expectancy of a Russian soldier once deployed to the Ukrainian front was less than 35 minutes. Surely, part of the message Ratcliffe was sent to deliver in private is that the war has turned against Putin, and now would be a wise time to come to the table and make a deal. These developments have me feeling a bit torn. Hindsight is 2020, but it's easy to envision a very different war if we had vigorously supported Ukraine from day one. What if the Biden

administration had gone all in on giving Ukraine everything they asked for right away, rather than delaying and stuttering at every turn? Would the war be over now? What if 20 months ago Trump had not entered office with animosity towards Zelensky and had ramped up U.S. support rather than cut it back. Would we have a peace deal by now? On the other hand, Ukraine's gains have mostly come in the last few months after the Trump administration began scaling down its support and Ukraine's European allies began scaling theirs up. A reasonable lesson to learn from that might be that Ukraine didn't need all the U.S. support they were asking for. After all, they just needed Europe to do more. Maybe that's just correlation, and all Ukraine needed was to develop its slaughterbots.

But it's equally easy to envision again how much better off Ukraine would have been had both the United States and Europe thrown their full weight behind it from the jump. Of course, the hesitancy here and abroad in backing Ukraine was never about money or weapons. It was about the risk of wasting money and weapons or escalating a war we couldn't finish. that is backing a country that everyone expected to fold in a matter of weeks. And then when that country survived those weeks, backing a country that would fold at the first winter. And then when they survived the first winter, backing a country that at best could only manage a stalemate. Rather than do the right thing and fund or fight a just war defending 40 million free people from an invading nation, the United States and Europe fretted over whether they were backing the winning horse.

which brings us to lesson number three. Betting on the winning horse isn't nearly as important as betting on the right horse. Obviously, I don't know what will happen next, but I'm left wondering the same thing, Timothy Ash wrote, under what writers abroad are saying? What was the specific intel that the U.S. received on Russia's plans to attack NATO or escalate in Ukraine that prompted the Trump administration that has typically given Putin and the regime a pass benefit of the doubt

on all things Ukraine-related to dispatch Ratcliffe to Moscow. I can't imagine it's good. With so much of our military capacity currently tied up or being expanded in Iran, even a small tussle with Russia and Europe would be devastating for our munitions and military, but also for global security and the global economy. Whatever the Trump administration's message to Putin was, it was clearly intended to keep him from testing the United States. Let's just hope it worked.

All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to pass it over to managing editor Ari Weitzman, who has a dissent today, and then I'll be back for your questions answered. This is Tangles Managing Editor Ari Weizman with a narrow staff dissent with Isaac's argument today. I don't think Putin is going to attack Enido country. And if you don't want to take it from me, take it from Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who said just last week in an interview translated to English, I don't believe that Russia would ever want to attack the world's most powerful military alliance, NATO.

Stubb is as close to this issue as it gets, and not just geographically. Finland, very notably, successfully lobbied to join the alliance after Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, specifically because he believed Finland would be better protected from Russian attacks if it joined. So did Sweden. Furthermore, Trump isn't the only leader in this saga who likes mudding the waters as a foreign. foreign policy tool. In just this current war, Putin has deliberately signaled uncertainty about whether he'd used nuclear weapons. And yes, I know that he actually could be willing to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and yes, Putin's administration has referred to the Baltic states as

provinces. And yes, I'm aware that the argument Putin's not that reckless or stupid failed when it came to the Kiev offensive, but truly, I just don't think he's this reckless or stupid. provoking the entire NATO alliance is a Hitler-invading Russia kind of blunder that a student of Russian military history like Putin is just not likely to make. Everybody has a line. And if invading Latvia isn't Putin's, then people like Finnish President Stubb, whose national security depends on reading the Russian leader,

have grossly, grossly misread him. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, thanks, Ari. I'm going to jump back in here for your questions answered. This one today is from Manny and Washington, D.C. Manny said there have been more discussions recently about democratic socialism. I resonate with many of their principles,

such as expanding access to child care and other benefits, but the defund the police one seems very far off to the left. And I don't think many people are actually in line with that thinking. After doing some research, I saw that people actually think of it more as reforming the police system rather than abolishing it. All right, so defunding and reforming the police are two distinct camps, but the waters can be muddied. Reform is focused on changing how police are trained and holding them accountable when they make mistakes.

Some reformists call for redirecting funds from police to other public services. Conversely, defund the police advocates often take fault with the concept of law enforcement as a whole and want to eliminate and replace it with community-oriented public safety services, aligning them with the police abolitionist movements. They see policing as a fundamentally unreformable and violent institution. To fund the police was a rallying cry for activists in the summer of 2020, but it's since become politically unpopular, and many politicians who adopted the slogan have tried to distance themselves from it more recently.

As the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA, gains prominence, its stance on policing is gaining attention. The DSA does advocate for abolishing the police in the long run. Its abolition working group platform reads, quote, For all the working class to achieve collective liberation, we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state from prisons and police themselves to their manifestations in all forms throughout society. As for individual DSA or Democratic Socialist-Aligned candidates, it's a mixed bag.

Politicians like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Representative Alon Omar and Representative Rashida Taleb were vocal supporters of defunding the police in 2020 and 2021, but have stopped centering the issue in their platforms, though they haven't explicitly renounced the slogan either. Some, like New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul Al-Said, have sought to distance themselves from past support. And others, like Senator Bernie Sanders, have opposed the idea from the beginning. So, we can't cleanly describe the positions of Democratic Socialists as if they were, were monolithic. It's better to evaluate each politician individually. But it is true that DSA's

national platform advocates for eventually fully defunding the police. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to Audrey for the rest of the podcast, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Next up, we have today's under the radar story. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio's attempts to deport non-citizens for political speech violated the First and Fifth Amendments. The Stanford Daily, the student-run newspaper of Stanford University, and a second unnamed plaintiff brought the suit, alleging that the State Department's policy caused non-citizens on student visas to refrain from writing opinion articles out of fear of deportation.

In 2025, the Trump administration sought to revoke the visas of non-citizens involved in protests against the war in Gaza, including Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University graduate student Ramesa Austerk. Judge Noel Wise found that this effort violated constitutional free speech protections, but a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. is under no obligation to admit or suffer the presence of individuals who subvert our laws and deny our citizens their constitutional rights.

Politico has the story, and you can find the link in the show notes. Finally, last up for today, we have our Have a Nice Day story. In 1998, Michael J. Fox revealed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Twenty-eight years later, he became the recipient of the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the Emmys. Fox founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation two years after his diagnosis, and it's since become the world's largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson's research, backing over $3 billion in studies toward better treatments and a cure. Best known for his roles in family ties and back to the future, Fox has become as renowned for his work with the disease as for his acting.

Joseph Litzinger, co-chair of the Television Academy's Awards Committee, said, quote, His dedication to helping others navigate the challenges of this disease serves as an inspiration to us all. Television Academy has the story and you can find the link in the show notes. That's it for today's podcast. If you would like to support our work, head over to readtingle.com, where you can buy a newsletter subscription, a podcast subscription, or a bundle membership that gets you a discount on both.

We will be right back here tomorrow, but in the meantime, this has been editor Audrey Moorhead. On behalf of Isaac and everyone else, have a nice day and peace. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editors, Audrey Moorehead, and Bailey Saul.

Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.