Big changes are coming for the U.S. intelligence community in 2025. President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration will bring significant reforms to America’s spies. Some are very long overdue.
As I recently explained for the Washington Examiner, our broken IC has shamed itself over the past decade. It needs a substantial overhaul, not merely cosmetic changes to how it does its secret business. Post-9/11 reforms of our spy agencies, which just passed their 20th anniversary, represented more half-measures than the real change that’s needed now. Whether Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii Democrat and current MAGA stalwart whom Trump nominated to be his director of national intelligence, makes the Senate’s cut remains to be seen.
Yet whoever winds up as Trump’s spy chief has a big job in front of them. The 17-agency behemoth that is the IC is difficult to steer, congenitally secretive, and bureaucratically inscrutable. It will be a big boost to reform efforts if the commander in chief understands what needs to be done.
Unfortunately, Trump just reminded everyone that his comprehension of how America’s spy agencies work is limited.
In the aftermath of the New Year’s Day terrorist attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas, the president-elect took to Truth Social, where he denounced “OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership,” adding that “the DOJ, FBI, and Democrat state and local prosecutors have not done their job. They are incompetent and corrupt, having spent all of their waking hours unlawfully attacking their political opponent, ME, rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself. Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen to our Country. The CIA must get involved, NOW, before it is too late.”
The problem is that the Central Intelligence Agency is a foreign intelligence service lacking any remit in domestic matters, including border security. How is it possible that, after four years in the Oval Office, Trump doesn’t know this? Is he merely trolling liberals, as he so enjoys doing?
Fortunately, we can be certain that John Ratcliffe, whom Trump has nominated to head the CIA after serving as the DNI late in Trump’s last term, is fully aware that Langley doesn’t do border security. The problem is that the commander in chief should know that too. Trump’s troublingly incorrect statement was denounced by Steve Bannon, the keeper of the MAGA flame. Bannon recently criticized Trump for siding with Elon Musk over support for more H-1B visas, an issue that has inflamed America First opinion. Here, Bannon resembles Ulster loyalists who, in the 1970s, chose to fight the British to stay British. Bannon again took Trump to task. “The CIA, Mr. President, is part of the problem, a serious part of the problem,” he explained, adding: “And no, we don’t want the CIA involved in anything domestically, they’re involved too much domestically as is.”
Bannon is correct that the last thing America needs is more dubiously legal CIA involvement in our domestic affairs. Federal laws and executive orders make it crystal clear that the CIA, along with all our foreign intelligence agencies, has no legally approved domestic function. CIA espionage involves foreigners and foreign targets. Domestic intelligence is done by the Federal Bureau of Investigation — and that role is problematic enough for civil liberties and should be ended.
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The IC reform agenda in Trump’s second term must steer our spy agencies away from domestic politics in any capacity. Intelligence bosses, active or retired, who opt for partisan politics must be shunned, not rewarded, no matter who is sitting in the White House. They must lose their security clearances, lucrative for credibility and private consulting, if they decide to become partisan activists.
Top line: The CIA and all our intelligence agencies need root-and-branch reform plus clear guidance that they must be absolutely nonpartisan and apolitical in their conduct. Trump telling people that he wants the CIA engaged in border security is the wrong message.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.