Jesse Ventura and the CIA

Update: CIA confirms Ventura meeting occurred

Turns out there actually was a Ventura meeting with the CIA in 1999. CIA Spokesman George Little confirmed the event today in a written statement, but he offered few details.

Little said that "on occasion CIA officers meet with senior state government officials, as they did in this case, to discuss issues of mutual interest."

Little shed less light on another revelation in Ventura's book. The former Independence Party governor says he was "stunned to learn that there is a CIA operative inside every state government." Ventura says the Minnesota operative was a deputy commissioner, who was working with a dual identity.

In response to a question about Ventura's claim, Little wrote, "I wouldn't think of CIA officers as being in state governments. They're federal employees."

Former wrestler and Governor Jesse Ventura has a book out, written with well-known JFK assassination researcher Dick Russell. You can get an advance look at it here, although you have to sign up first.

Shortly after he took office in 1999, he was escorted to a state Capitol conference room where 23 CIA agents were waiting. He writes that they grilled him about how he campaigned and won the election. "In short, how had the independent wrestler candidate pulled this off?"

He said he learned "there is a CIA operative inside every state government. ... In Minnesota, this person was at a deputy commissioner level, fairly high up."

"In our country, there is a certain ruling class that won't give up the power," he writes. "I know I had to be destroyed because of what I represented and how I got elected. There was a ripple of fright that what happened in Minnesota could be a trend."