CIA staffers warn that the agency has been undermined over the past year by political pressure from the top, The Atlantic reported on Friday.
Ever since President Donald Trump’s second term began, wrote Shane Harris, “the number of CIA employees who said they are concerned that the objectivity of analysis is being undermined by political influence has gone up significantly,” per a survey conducted by the CIA’s ombudsman. “The results haven’t been made public, but they were described to me by several people familiar with them.”
Harris noted his sources “requested not to be identified by name so that they could speak candidly.”
A key target for blame for surveyed staffers was former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who left office recently.
Respondents to the survey particularly were dispirited by “Gabbard’s decision to revoke the security clearances of more than three dozen current and former national-security officials,” none of whom were actually accused of wrongdoing but many of whom had worked on the 2016 Russian election interference investigation. Gabbard and Trump have both spent years claiming, with no evidence, that that investigation was a “hoax” and made up to weaponize government power against the right.
Also cited were “broader concerns about a political climate in which the president has routinely misrepresented intelligence to the public and directed his advisers to find evidence, however dubious, to support his claims about a stolen election in 2020.”
After Gabbard’s exit, Trump replaced her on an acting basis with Bill Pulte, his highly partisan housing finance administrator, who has lost no time making additional purges of the intelligence community. His permanent DNI nominee, Jay Clayton, is awaiting confirmation with no clear timeline.
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