Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, left, speaks during a press briefing at the White House on July 23. Photo / Sarah L. Voisin, The Washington Post
In the days leading up to United States President Donald Trump’s August 15 Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of the CIA’s senior-most Russia experts worked gruelling hours, helping Trump and his team prepare.
The summit involved high-stakes diplomacy over Ukraine and the official was making sure they were adequately briefed, according to a former agency colleague.
Four days later, the CIA officer - whom the Washington Post is not naming for her protection - was at work in the spy agency’s Langley headquarters when she was abruptly ordered to report to the security office.
She was informed that her clearance to look at classified material was being stripped. In a span of minutes, her 29-year career in public service was essentially over.
The officer had been expecting an imminent move to Europe to take up a prestigious assignment approved by CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Instead, she became the latest casualty of a widening cull by Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, fuelled at times by far-right activist Laura Loomer.
It is targeting national security professionals whom they deem to have engaged in “politicisation or weaponisation of intelligence to advance personal, partisan, or non-objective agendas”, according to Gabbard’s August 19 memo announcing the revocation at Trump’s direction of security clearances.
The memo, posted on X, listed no specific infractions, but to many current and former officials it looked to be a revenge-driven loyalty purge. Among the 37 people whose clearances Gabbard publicly revoked were senior US intelligence officials, including the CIA officer.
The CIA declined to comment. The CIA officer did not respond to a request for comment.
The forced ousters have cut across priority issues on the US national security agenda, removing:
Early in Trump’s Administration, experienced officers who had taken temporary stints involving diversity programmes were fired.
Probationary employees, including nuclear engineers and Chinese-speaking analysts were let go.
The axe has fallen on spy agency personnel with decades of experience dealing with Russia and Ukraine, potentially depriving the Trump Administration of expertise as it conducts high-stakes diplomacy with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to try to end the conflict that began with Russia’s February 2022 invasion, former US officials said.
As they see colleagues fired, reassigned or stripped of their clearances, those who remain will be less willing to report intelligence that contains unpalatable truths or contradicts Trump’s views, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of concern that they could also be targeted.
Former US officials who worked closely with the ousted CIA officer described her as highly respected and apolitical, with no presence on social media and no record of voicing any criticism of Trump or his policies. The officer, one said, is “the antithesis of a political operator”.
The CIA officer’s dismissal sent shock waves through the workforce, a second former official said.
“If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone ... What analyst in their right mind is going to write something that in any way challenges ... what they think the Administration’s view is if they think they’re going to get fired over it?”
Trump has long disdained expertise that resides in government bureaucracies, trusting instead his instincts, personal ties with world leaders, and close associates, often from his days as a businessman.
He has dismembered the White House’s National Security Council staff, which has served presidents since Harry Truman by bringing together disparate national security agencies to share information, debate opposing views, provide options for the president and ensure their decisions are carried out.
“It’s actually quite positive, the fact that this is now a top-down president leading the charge”, instead of “so-called experts who have read a lot of books but never talked to Putin”, a Trump official said.
The White House sees aides such as special envoy Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and Trump golfing partner, as more valuable than the experts because he knows and understands the President.
Trump is not the first president to have soured on powerful US spy agencies, which have sometimes failed to warn of attacks or minimised risks, such as in the disastrous CIA-sponsored 1961 invasion of Cuba.
At other times, US presidents have ignored warnings, to their peril.
President George W. Bush and his advisers, for example, dismissed multiple CIA reports assessing that a US invasion of Iraq could ignite civil strife and ensnare US troops in a distant war.
The danger now is that such warnings won’t come at all, former officials said.
“It’s the prerogative of the policymaker to say, ‘I know what you intelligence people are telling me, but I’m going to do it this way.’ But to not avail themselves of that information is really risky,” said Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University and a former senior Pentagon official handling Eurasia matters under the Obama Administration.
“It’s really important to know as much as we can about our adversaries’ intentions, and even their strategy,” said Farkas.
“To eliminate the knowledge and expertise of these people from your arsenal is like throwing bullets down the toilet.”
The Trump Administration has specifically targeted former and current officials associated with a 2017 assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 US presidential election in part to help Trump over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
The ousted CIA officer held a senior role at the time involving intelligence on Russia and Eurasia but was not one of the document’s main drafters. Its findings have been upheld by multiple independent reviews, including an exhaustive bipartisan study by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Gabbard has portrayed the assessment as part of a treasonous conspiracy by outgoing Obama Administration officials to undermine Trump in his first term.
She has threatened legal action against former President Barack Obama and top national security aides, and she stripped security clearances from multiple former officials involved in analysing intelligence on Russia.
Decades of experience on Russia and Ukraine have been lost for other reasons.
A recent downsizing of the State Department’s intelligence bureau led to the departure of three Russia analysts, each of whom had at least 15 years of experience.
Tom Sylvester, who as the CIA’s deputy director of operations organised covert support for Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, was promised, then denied, the prestigious post of London station chief.
Ratcliffe decided he wanted a younger officer for the post, a person familiar with the matter said. But Sylvester’s assignment was pulled after he was quoted in a new book about the CIA, The Mission, which was excerpted in Foreign Policy magazine.
The CIA’s Russia team was largely responsible for assessments, disbelieved at the time by many European governments, that accurately predicted Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and enabled Kyiv to take critical preparations that prevented the country from being over-run by Russian forces.
Trump repeatedly promised during last year’s presidential campaign that he would end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours of taking office.
He appeared optimistic before the Alaska summit with Putin and hoped it would lead to a three-way meeting with Zelenskyy. Putin has since refused to meet Zelenskyy, continuing to oversee the deadly pummelling of Ukrainian cities.
His intransigence at times seems to have surprised Trump, who over the weekend, signalled he would pause Washington’s efforts to drive negotiations toward a ceasefire.
US spy agencies have been more sceptical about Putin’s willingness to cut a deal.
The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research has long maintained that the Russian leader’s goal is to subjugate Ukraine, said three former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.
“His ultimate ambition ... is to make Ukraine essentially come under Russian influence,” one former official said.
Analysts at the CIA have a range of views, with some saying there’s a chance Putin might see compromise in his self-interest, said the former officials familiar with the matter.
Overall, they put less emphasis on Putin’s “personal obsession with Ukraine” and focus more on quantifiable metrics, such as the balance of military capabilities between Russia and Ukraine, a second former official said.
Some of the ousted CIA analyst’s former colleagues fault Ratcliffe for not protecting one of his own.
“He’s overseeing an institution that’s supposed to be independent, to a large extent, of political influence, particularly the analytical institution,” one former official said.
“To allow an outsider who is not supposed to have influence over the process to remove your top person on Russia when you’ve just given her an overseas assignment is ridiculous.”
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