Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are demanding information about the Trump administration’s decision to strip 37 current and former national security officials of their security clearances, arguing that politics drove the revocations.
President Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, ordered the removal of the clearances, including those of at least three current officials at the C.I.A., National Security Agency, and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The loss of their clearances forced them out of their jobs.
In the letter, the House Democrats demanded information about the process that led to the revoking of the clearances. “It is imperative that Congress be satisfied that you are not politicizing the work of the intelligence community or using the security clearance process for political ends,” they said in the letter, which was drafted by Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
While the head of the N.S.A. lobbied for his top artificial intelligence scientist to be removed from the list, other intelligence leaders did not know their experts were being stripped of their clearances until after Ms. Gabbard’s office issued the memo last month.
The letter from the House Democrats asks Ms. Gabbard whether she consulted with security clearance adjudicators, agency heads and other officials before revoking the clearances.
While intelligence agencies traditionally reply to letters from Congress, even from members of the minority, the answers are not always swift in coming. Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees have also complained the Trump administration has been slow in providing briefings.
A C.I.A. officer, who served as a Russia analyst but who was operating undercover, was included by name on the list. The House letter asks if Ms. Gabbard took that into account before releasing the list.
Other administration officials have said her name was publicly available, arguing that the agency’s contention her name should be kept secret had little merit.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Gabbard did not immediately return a request for comment. At the time of the revocations, her office asserted that the people losing clearances had been involved in the “politicization or weaponization of intelligence” to advance partisan agendas, had failed to adhere to tradecraft practices or had neglected to safeguard classified information.
Many, though not all, of the 37 had connections to the intelligence agencies’ work investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Ms. Gabbard has been critical of the intelligence agencies handling of the matter, accusing the Obama administration of a “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine Mr. Trump.
The Trump administration has been making it more difficult for Democrats, who are in the minority in both the House and Senate, from conducting oversight of the intelligence agencies. The Pentagon last week blocked Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, from making an oversight visit to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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