Does a video from a 2016 Council on Foreign Relations event show former CIA director, John Brennan, admitting during a speech that toxic chemicals are deliberately sprayed from planes into the atmosphere? No, that's not true: Brennan's words about emerging geoengineering technologies were taken out of context by conspiracy theorists to fuel their so-called chemtrails theories.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @mitko_dimitrov0806 on May 21, 2023, with a caption reading, as translated from Bulgarian to English by Lead Stories staff:
Former CIA chief John Brennan, admits to the chemical sprayings from airplanes!
Truth always emerges and cannot be hidden!
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jun 6 07:18:56 2023 UTC)
John Brennan was invited as a guest speaker at the Council on Foreign Relations event on June 29, 2016, to discuss the current transnational threats to global security.
In a small part of his speech, he discussed the risks and possible foreign policy implications arising from the emergence of new technologies such as geoengineering. He also addressed medical breakthroughs that can extend life expectancy, new approaches to fighting cancer, and the risks connected to bioengineering, such as genome editing.
Brennan mentioned that one geoengineering solution to address rising temperatures from climate change proposed the use of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) to reflect the sun's heat and this was interpreted by conspiracy theorists as an official confirmation that a so-called chemtrails policy exists.
This is what he said:
Another example is the array of technologies, often referred to collectively as geoengineering, that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI: a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun's heat in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.
He continued:
As promising as it may be, moving forward on SAI would also raise a number of challenges for our government and for the international community.
Brennan did not state that such technology is currently utilized during his speech and he discussed the risks of potential climate intervention with the use of previously unused technologies.
Since 2016, his speech has been used by conspiracy theorists to support their belief that jet exhaust vapors are instead chemicals sprayed by high-flying planes, known as so-called chemtrails. The theory has been widely debunked in articles and fact checks here and here.
