A top senator has written a cryptic letter to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency expressing alarm at the secretive agency’s activities.
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote to John Ratcliffe on Wednesday to make him aware of an earlier classified letter in which he made his concerns known. In the brief letter, Wyden did not provide specifics on the nature of the issue.
“I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today, in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities,” Wyden wrote.
Wyden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast. The CIA and the Office of National Intelligence have also been contacted for comment.
The curious development comes amid lingering questions about some of the Trump administration’s intelligence arms.
The CIA, CNN reported last month, has been working to establish a foothold in Venezuela following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, to whom Ratcliffe reports, is also facing an intelligence official’s whistleblower complaint, which is kept in a safe at the office of the intelligence community’s inspector general.
According to a memo about the complaint obtained by the Associated Press, it alleges that Gabbard “restricted” the distribution of a “highly classified intelligence report” for “political purposes.” Officials with the DNI’s Office of General Counsel, it adds, “failed to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice, also for political purposes.”
According to the AP, House and Senate intelligence committee members have that memo, and copies of the complaint are expected to be sent to those lawmakers this week.
Wyden’s office has a portal through which whistleblowers can submit complaints.
Gabbard’s office has said the complaint is “baseless and politically motivated.”
Gabbard’s spokesperson, Olivia Coleman, previously told the Daily Beast: “The Whistleblower’s allegations against DNI Gabbard were ALREADY not deemed credible, which is exactly what the IC IG told Congress. Literally anyone can submit an ‘allegation of wrongdoing.’ That does not make it true.”
Meanwhile, Gabbard is at the forefront of Trump’s efforts to try to prove that the 2020 presidential election he fairly lost was rigged against him, having appeared at Georgia’s Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center last week during an FBI raid.
“My presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counterintelligence (CI), foreign and other malign influence and cybersecurity,” she told Wyden and other lawmakers on Monday.
However, Trump told NBC News in an interview aired Wednesday night that “I don’t know” why she was there after all.
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