William Burns, the previous Central Intelligence Agency director, accused the Trump administration of enacting “a campaign of retribution” under “the guise of a reform process” on Tuesday.
The Biden administration’s CIA chief gave his scathing rebuke of the current administration’s transformation of the intelligence community during an event with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Recommended Stories
“I worry deeply about what’s happening to honorable, career public servants who are apolitical. And you know, the way in which, under the guise of a reform process, it really has turned into more of a campaign of retribution and creating fear,” said Burns, who spent decades as a diplomat before becoming a spy. “Fear in the sense of creating a culture that’s about looking over your shoulder and, you know, ‘Should I speak truth to power? Should I convey information very directly that might be contrary to what the policymakers want to hear?'”
Burns warned of a “chilling effect” on CIA employees.
“I have great faith in the integrity of officers who are still serving their analysts and operations officers, and their determination to continue to do that,” Burns added. “But if you continue to take some of the steps which really are about retribution and sowing fear, you can have a very chilling effect on people over time, and that’s something that I think, you know, we have to be really careful about.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has radically reshaped the intelligence community in the first several months on the job. Gabbard has frequently accused her predecessors in the IC of what Burns is accusing her of doing: politicizing the intelligence community.
“The fact that former CIA Director Burns, and other intelligence bureaucrats, find accountability and transparency ‘chilling’ speaks volumes and is a clear indication of how deeply weaponization and politicization are entrenched in the Intelligence Community’s core,” a DNI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “This is exactly the type of rot that DNI Gabbard is working day in and day out to eliminate. Those who abuse their access to our nation’s secrets by weaponizing, politicizing, manipulating, or leaking information should not have access to classified material. It really is that simple.”
In March, Gabbard revoked security clearances for former Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and former national security adviser Jake Sullivan, along with other Biden administration officials. She also revoked the security clearances of the 51 signers of the Hunter Biden laptop “disinformation” letter, though two of them have since died.
“Unfortunately, in my short tenure here, so far, we have already seen too many examples of politicization, weaponization of intelligence throughout our country’s history. We look at where we are now,” she said at the National Conservatism Conference last week.
In May, Gabbard removed acting National Intelligence Council Chairman Mike Collins and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, from their posts. Both were holdovers from the Biden administration.
The Washington Post reported that the Collins and Langan-Riekhof firings came weeks after they wrote an assessment concluding that the Venezuelan government is likely not directing Tren de Aragua members abroad, contradicting the administration’s public stance, though an ODNI spokesperson denied that reporting at the time.
“You are genuinely bad at your job, but that is likely a prerequisite for WaPo. No one from ODNI told you that, so of course you inject your own politically motivated opinion,” Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, said. “That’s wrong, but who cares about facts, right? These Biden holdovers were dismissed because they politicized intelligence. Also, it shouldn’t be lost on you that the leak of classified info was a NIC product, which is against the law; that is the issue.”
Gabbard announced in August that the ODNI would undergo a transformation that would reduce personnel by 40% by the end of fiscal 2025 and save taxpayers more than $700 million annually.
The administration has also removed multiple senior leaders in charge of agencies that work closely with the intelligence community but fall under the Department of War. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, who had served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, last month.
His dismissal, which was announced without explanation, came weeks after a preliminary assessment from the agency found that the U.S. Air Force’s strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities were less impactful than what President Donald Trump and Hegseth declared.
The president also fired Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency, and his deputy, Wendy Nobel, in April. MAGA-adjacent activist Laura Loomer advocated for Trump to fire them and has continued to identify government officials she claims are trying to sabotage the president’s agenda.
In July, Gabbard referred former President Barack Obama and several of his top aides to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution, though she stopped short of recommending any specific charges, including treason.
She accused Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, and ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper of illegally conspiring to fabricate links between Trump and the Russian government.
“There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Barack Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew that was false,” Gabbard claimed then. “The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.”