On the anniversary of 9/11, we are forced to consider the sad state of our so-called “intelligence” agencies, unable or unwilling to protect America. Much of the conservative commentary emphasizes the political nature of the FBI and the CIA and their determination to keep Donald J. Trump out of the White House and maintain the Obama/Biden Administration in power. But the National Security Agency (NSA) also bears watching.

The NSA is counting on Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), ostensibly to collect information about foreign threats.

Yet, the NSA is currently celebrating the activities of a Soviet spy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project scientist who worked on behalf of the Soviet Union and the development of its atom bomb project.

Indeed, America’s premier spy agency, the NSA has a display in its museum insisting that Oppenheimer was an innocent victim of anti-communist hysteria.

Consider that the National Cryptologic Museum is described by the spy agency as “NSA’s gateway to the public.”

What has happened to the NSA? It has gone woke.

The NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum once featured an exhibit on Soviet infiltration of the Manhattan Project. The release of the transcripts of the Venona project of the NSA, consisting of interceptions of Soviet messages exposing Soviet atomic bomb espionage, came in 1995-1996.

But today, the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum glorifies Oppenheimer, a communist spy, by featuring a letter he wrote to a journalist.

I visited the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum on August 9, 2023, confirming that the Venona exhibit had been “rotated out” of the museum and replaced with a “Protecting America’s Secrets” display paying homage to Oppenheimer.

Let this fact sink in: the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum no longer features a display on how KGB spies infiltrated the Manhattan Project. Instead, it now includes a display whitewashing Soviet spy Oppenheimer and ignoring the substantial evidence of his record as a communist spy

My group, America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), has long been concerned about the direction of the NSA. We published Blood on His Hands: The True Story of Edward Snowden, examining the disclosures from the former CIA and NSA employee that put America and its allies in danger of further Russian aggression, Islamic terrorism, and Chinese cyber warfare.

Since this book was published in 2015, these threats have come to pass. Russia invaded Ukraine, and a major war in Europe continues as a result. With the assistance of the federal government’s “health” establishment, which financed “gain of function” research in communist China, the communist military unleased the China virus. And the country that became a base for terrorists, Afghanistan, is now totally controlled by them.

In my efforts to understand the Snowden problem in the NSA and CIA, I didn’t gain access to classified information. All I had at my disposal was 40 years of experience in analyzing intelligence failures in the face of an international communist threat.

When NSA analysts William Martin and Bernon Mitchell defected to Russia in 1960, President Eisenhower labeled them traitors and former President Harry Truman said they should be shot. Investigations revealed that both young men had been members of the Communist Party and were homosexual lovers.

To understand the nature of Oppenheimer’s betrayal, in the context of the release of the recent Christopher Nolan film glorifying him, we issued a new report—Hollywood’s Whitewash of a Communist Spy and the Infiltration of America’s Nuclear Labs. This 24-page report is based in part on the work of Herbert Romerstein, who co-authored a book on the NSA’s Venona project exposing Soviet espionage in America’s nuclear laboratory. His book The Venona Secrets: The Definitive Exposé of Soviet Espionage in America can be found in the NSA museum library.

In a letter to General Paul M. Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency, I noted that I had visited the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum, confirming that the Venona exhibit had been “rotated out” of the museum and replaced with a “Protecting America’s Secrets” display paying homage to Oppenheimer.

I informed Nakasone that, unless we maintain the viability of our nuclear deterrent and our nuclear weapons development, America will exist no more. No issue is more important.

I am sure he must agree with my common-sense assessment. So what accounts for the decision to pay homage to a Soviet spy in the NSA’s gateway to the public? It is what some call “wokeness” or the ideology of the politically correct. The elites want to whitewash Oppenheimer in the same way many of them still consider Soviet spy Alger Hiss innocent of the charges against him.

It is this phenomenon that puts our nation at risk. It is the same problem which allowed the FBI to mishandle the case of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, blaming them on a group of innocent American scientists and ignoring how terrorist operatives had stolen the deadly substance from a U.S. lab.

Today, as the ASI report makes clear, our nuclear labs are still being infiltrated.

America’s next 9/11 could be a nuclear attack killing millions.

• Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org