US President Joe Biden on Friday thanked staff at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for “warning” the world about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine, and hailed what he called the “quiet bravery” of America’s spies, Reuters reported.

Marking the CIA’s 75th anniversary, Biden said he had been involved with the agency for 52 of those years, first as a junior senator on a 1975 committee set up to investigate mind control experiments and other abuses by the agency.

Intelligence gathered by the CIA had exposed Putin’s plans and allowed Washington to warn other countries about the war, he said.

“It was thanks to the incredible work of our intelligence professionals that we were able to forewarn the world what Vladimir Putin was planning in Ukraine,” he said. “Exposing Putin’s playbook punched a gigantic hole in the pretense, and discredited his lies about what we were doing in Ukraine.”