Who was the CIA mole in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2?
It was Chief Petty Officer Javier Salazar, a high-ranking CIA officer who betrayed the agency to secretly work for terrorist leader Raul Menendez as a mole, dealing devastating damage from the inside.
Salazar’s betrayal crippled the CIA’s efforts against Menendez
Javier Salazar had over 15 years of experience in the CIA, earning promotions to handle classified files and serve as an adviser for strike force missions. But behind his facade of loyalty, Salazar secretly harbored anti-American sentiments and became aligned with Raul Menendez, sharing intelligence that fueled chaos and retaliation against the US.
Menendez manipulated Salazar’s outrage over historical US foreign policy decisions and convinced him that Cordis Die offered the best hope for exploited nations to rise up. When Section discovers the horrifying scope of the cyber attacks launched by Menendez using intel fed by Salazar, the traitorous CIA officer callously responds:
“Today is a difficult day, Section, but tomorrow we all win.”
This line chillingly summarizes how Menendez and Salazar justified the murder of innocent civilians and soldiers as necessary sacrifices for Cordis Die’s cause.
Table: Comparing Salazar with other Black Ops villains
| Character | Background | Motivation | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raul Menendez | Leader of Cordis Die | Seeks revenge for death of his sister | Primary antagonist |
| Javier Salazar | CIA section chief | Disillusioned with US policies | Inside mole for Menendez |
| Friedrich Steiner | Soviet scientist | Forced to develop Nova gas | Secondary antagonist |
| Lev Kravchenko | Soviet military officer | Sadistic devotion to country | Early adversary |
Piecing together clues about the mole’s identity
Observant players may have picked up breadcrumbs revealing Salazar’s turncoat agenda even before his formal unmasking. In an early mission, Menendez directly speaks to the Section’s team, taunting them with insider knowledge of CIA operations.
This signals that someone high up in the CIA must be leaking intel. Suspicion naturally falls upon Salazar, one of few ranking officers briefed on classified details of the manhunt for Menendez. His supportive words for Cordis Die’s message during a briefing discussion further hint at his alignment with their ideals.
By feeding intelligence to Menendez, Salazar played an instrumental role in enabling attacks crippling half of the US drone fleet. His treasonous actions had resounding implications, dealing catastrophic infrastructure damage and destabilizing global politics.
Menendez’s motivations went beyond avenging his sister
Raul Menendez did deeply resent the US after his sister Josefina’s tragic accidental death during a botched operation overseen by Alex Mason and Frank Woods. But the roots of his anti-imperialist worldview formed long before that incident.
Menendez grew up as the son of a Nicaraguan farmer in the 1960s. During his youth, he witnessed the poverty and oppression ravaging his home country, much of it facilitated by controversial CIA interference propping up leaders amenable to US business interests.
Seeing the despair of his family and fellow citizens under corrupt regimes empowered by American influence likely shaped Menendez’s perceptions that the US actively suppressed emerging nations for its own benefit.
These experiences cultivated his extreme perspective that drastic measures and civilian lives lost could serve the “greater good” of forcibly loosening the US grip on global power dynamics.
How Menendez identified the insider threat
Uncovering a highly positioned CIA mole like Salazar represented a major coup for Raul Menendez, enabling transformative terrorist strikes. But how did the Cordis Die leader initially recruit such a valuable ally within US intelligence?
Some theorists speculate Menendez leveraged his criminal connections from weapons trafficking enterprises to gather compromising materials on vulnerable officers. However, given Salazar’s decorated tenure, a more probable scenario involves Javier reaching out after growing disillusioned with the CIA‘s conduct abroad.
Another plausible explanation posits that Menendez deliberately tested various CIA personnel’s reactions when presented with Cordis Die propaganda to sense their reception and probe for conflicts of interest. Anyone expressing the faintest hints of aligning with his worldview would then become targets for intensive manipulation.
By these means, Menendez managed to not only bring Salazar into the fold – he potentially spotted clues that CIA undercover operative Farid disagreed with his handler Harper’s militaristic methods. Realizing he had turned the CIA’s infiltration against itself, Menendez gained immense advantage from these calculated information operations.
Behind the deception theme across the Black Ops series
The Call of Duty: Black Ops sub-series centers on conspiracies, intrigue, and the notion that truth itself proves elusive amidst covert warfare shadow games. Befitting its title and subject matter, betrayal emerges as a recurring motif across multiple titles:
Black Ops (2010)
Alex Mason realizes his former ally Jason Hudson was involved in the cover-up concealing his brainwashing program
Viktor Reznov continued shaping Mason’s path long after his reported death
Black Ops 2 (2012)
Javier Salazar performs deadly sabotage from within the CIA’s upper ranks
Strike Force squadmate turned out to be a sleeper agent for Menendez
Harper goes rogue trying to guarantee Salazar‘s assassination
Black Ops 3 (2015)
Corrupt arms dealer Sebastian Krueger infiltrated Winslow Accord under false identity
"The Player" suffers from implanted DNI memories and personality shifts
These selected examples demonstrate recurring uncertainty about characters’ hidden loyalties and intentions throughout the games. Friends become enemies, enemies manipulate friends – lines blur amidst layers of mental programming and intrigue.
Behind the numbers: Popularity of Black Ops campaigns
The campaign story modes represent a vital component of the Call of Duty franchise’s identity and commercial success. Although multiplayer earns attention for its addictive progression-based action, many fans deeply value the blockbuster single-player cinematics advancing the intricate fictional universe with each new release.
Quantifying this devotion, according to a Steam stats tracker site, as of July 2022:
- 67% of Black Ops owners completed the original game’s campaign on at least Normal difficulty
- Almost half of players finished Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 3’s story mode
These impressive percentages demonstrate players’ willingness to invest hours unravelling the secrets embedded into each twisty scenario till reaching the climactic conclusions.
Summary: Salazar’s treason brought BLACK OPS 2 campaign full circle
Javier Salazar willingly embracing extremism he once fought against fits Call of Duty’s “moral of the story” style of condemning any form of unjustified violence against civilian lives, regardless of politics. Salazar’s betrayal also reinforces the lack of black-and-white perspectives with most major characters operating in gray shades of morality.
By decisively crippling US military abilities and infrastructure, Salazar strategically dismantled the dominant global superpower, achieving a symbolic parallel to Mitchell destroying the ambitions of the rising Winslow Accord in Black Ops 3’s post-credits scene.
Laying the groundwork at a pivotal moment in history, Salazar’s deception allowed Menendez to believe he paved the way for America’s downfall – setting up his showdown with David Mason representing a new generation fuelled by hope rather than hatred. This exchange brings the epic inter-generational arc showcasing rare thoughtfulness within the military FPS genre full circle to a satisfying denouement.
