Ex-CIA officer says US strikes intelligence is being ‘credited to CIA’ as cover

What was said

""How do we get into Iran and find the leaders? CIA intelligence. It wasn't CIA. It was somebody else filtering their information through the bureaucratic engine of CIA. And then CIA gets the credit.""

Former CIA officer Andrew Bustamante argues that public claims of “CIA intelligence” behind operations (including in Iran and Venezuela) often obscure the true source, with foreign partners’ reporting processed through CIA channels and attributed to the agency. He says this structure lets policymakers cite CIA as a “shield” while protecting sources and methods — and, in his view, sometimes masking that the underlying intelligence came largely from partner services.