cia

Revealed: 'Irresponsible' Trump official published CIA's 'most closely guarded secrets'

The minimally redacted classified report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released late last month contains information so sensitive that it could allow America’s enemies to detect top-secret spying techniques and human sources, and could result in America’s allies reconsidering the trust they place in the U.S. Intelligence Community, one top Democrat is warning.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies opposed the release of the 46-page report, according to The Washington Post, but Director Gabbard released it “with the blessing of President Donald Trump.”

“The document contains multiple references to CIA human sources reporting on Putin’s plans. Such sources are among the agency’s most closely guarded secrets,” the Post reported.

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“Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Attorney General Pam Bondi have released a slew of intelligence and law enforcement reports over the last month that they claim — without evidence — prove that spy agencies’ finding that Moscow intervened in the 2016 presidential contest to help Trump is a ‘hoax’ concocted by the Obama administration,” according to the Post.

Indeed, the report Gabbard released, stemming from a 2017 Republican majority House Intelligence Committee review, disputes U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that Russian President Vladimir Putin preferred the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump in 2016, over Democrat Hillary Clinton, and made efforts to help him get elected.

A Republican majority U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report confirmed that Russian President Putin endeavored to help get now-President Donald Trump elected in 2016:

“The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.”

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U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blasted Gabbard’s release of the 46-page House report.

“The desperate and irresponsible release of the partisan House Intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe,” Senator Warner said in a statement, according to the Post. “And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.”

Separately, on Tuesday, Senator Warner wrote on social media, “Tulsi Gabbard is a threat to our national security and should be fired.”

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'Extremely bad': Ex-CIA agent says Trump's 'loyalty enforcer' threatens national security

One prominent far-right social media personality sometimes seen in President Donald Trump's orbit has carved out a niche for herself as the president's "loyalty enforcer," according to the New York Times. But one attorney representing administration officials who have been fired is publicly condemning her influence.

The Times reported Wednesday on the growing power MAGA activist Laura Loomer has over personnel decisions in the executive branch. Loomer has already gotten Trump to fire several officials who were deemed insufficiently loyal over past social media posts criticizing the president and his base. However, Kevin Carroll — a former CIA official and lawyer who has been retained as counsel by some of those former employees — said that Loomer's attempts to ferret out anyone who has ever spoken negatively about the president could have significant blowback.

"You have a person, from outside of the government of no national security experience and with extreme views, having de facto hire and fire authority over some of the most senior and important positions in the United States government," Carroll told the Times.

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"Eventually, when all of the qualified people are driven out and only the people acceptable to Laura Loomer remain, there could be an extremely bad result for the United States in some international crisis," he continued.

Loomer has already claimed responsibility for driving out the top two officials at the National Security Agency (NSA) — former director Timothy Haugh (a four-star general), deputy director Wendy Noble and chief counsel April Falcon Doss — along with several others. This week, Dr. Vinay Prasad, who was the top vaccine official at the Food & Drug Administration, also resigned after Loomer discovered that he joked about using Trump as a voodoo doll in a 2020 podcast.

The Times reported that despite her devotion to Trump, Loomer wasn't given a job either in Trump's 2024 campaign or in the White House. But the social media personality indicated that she aimed to continue screening administration officials to ensure they were staunch Trump loyalists.

"I was raised to dress for the job you want, and even if you don’t have the job, pretend that you do,” Loomer said. “I want to do vetting, so I’m going to do the job I want.”

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Click here to read the full Times report (subscription required).

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'National security nightmare': CIA chief 'sacrificed' top official over criticism of Trump

A stunning turn of events at the Central Intelligence Agency unfolded after a top official’s appointment to the London station — long considered the agency’s most prestigious overseas posting — was abruptly canceled. Now, that official has announced his retirement, the New York Times reported Monday.

Tom Sylvester, the agency’s long-serving deputy director for operations, was poised to become the top CIA liaison in the United Kingdom when the agency’s leadership reversed the decision following the publication of excerpts in Tim Weiner’s new book, The Mission. Although Sylvester’s remarks — ranging from intelligence sharing with Ukraine in 2014 to strengthening European alliances — were uncontroversial, their inclusion in the book sparked controversy, per the report.

In The Mission, Weiner interwove Sylvester’s quotes with his own editorial critique of recent U.S. intelligence leadership.

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“With [John] Ratcliffe in charge at the CIA, the MAGA warrior Kash Patel running the FBI, the conspiracy theorist Tulsi Gabbard overseeing national intelligence and the Christian nationalist Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, Trump has created the makings of a national security nightmare," the excerpt reportedly said.

But Weiner pushed back on applying Sylvester’s statements to politics.

“The CIA is not shooting itself in the foot; it’s shooting itself in the head,” he told the Times.

“Ratcliffe is a political ideologue, and ideology is the enemy of intelligence. He has just keelhauled one of the best CIA officers of his generation. Tom Sylvester helped Ukraine survive after Russia invaded, among other achievements. That seems to be one reason why he’s been sacrificed.”

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Despite speculation, current intelligence officials insist Sylvester committed no misconduct and was not deemed disloyal. They say the book excerpt was not the true reason he was passed over for London. Although Ratcliffe had previously appointed Sylvester as acting CIA director pending his confirmation, senior insiders saw him as capable but not ideal for this next post.

The London chief of station role typically goes to the CIA’s most veteran operatives — former Director Gina Haspel held the position twice. However, Ratcliffe reportedly prefers a younger officer more aligned with the agency’s new, more aggressive approach to espionage and recruiting clandestine human sources.

The report further claimed that Sylvester had planned to step down earlier this year and expected one final overseas assignment before retirement. That move stalled after the Trump administration blocked his successor Ralph Goff’s appointment, following news coverage highlighting Goff’s Ukraine expertise.

The reason remains unclear, but the report said, citing sources, that it was unrelated to the war and surfaced amid sensitive negotiations with Russia.

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'Dangerously incompetent': CIA researcher warns 'crackpots and fools' are in charge

The Guardian reports even dedicated CIA critic Tim Weiner is sounding the alarm on the damage President Donald Trump is doing the agency.

Weiner — who wrote the CIA political take-down ‘Legacy of Ashes’ about decades of CIA mistakes and bad behavior — compares Trump’s second administration to watching the U.S. stand with Russia, Iran and North Korea by voting against a UN resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine.

“You come to the realization, if you hadn’t already: ‘My God, the president of the United States has gone over to the other side. He has joined the authoritarian axis,’” Weiner said.

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A chapter of Weiner’s new book "The Mission" addresses how the CIA was blindsided by Russia’s influence operation on behalf of Trump’s 2016 campaign. This was when Russian intelligence began releasing hacked Democratic National Committee emails, dealing a devastating blow to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“The Russians stole our f—————— election. How do we make sure this never happens again?” Weiner recalls CIA head Tom Rakusan demanding of his staff.

Following two impeachments, an insurrection and a second election, Trump is back in the White House and bent on revenge against the CIA. He’s also hired, according to Weiner, “a coterie of dangerously incompetent and servile acolytes to the highest positions of national security”.

“What keeps me up at night,” he told The Guardian, “is the fact that Trump has put the instruments of American national security in the hands of crackpots and fools, and that their incompetence and ideological blinkers will blind them to a coming attack. If the United States gets hit again under Trump, he will destroy what is left of our democracy.”

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Weiner describes new CIA director, John Ratcliffe — a former personal injury attorney — as “a spineless person who will do whatever Trump tells him to do.”

Ratcliffe immediately fired hundreds of recently hired staffers and then sent their names to Elon Musk in an unclassified email that Weiner said was probably intercepted by the Russians and Chinese, who are now presumably working to recruit them as spies.

“All they need to do is to find people who are either deeply resentful or who might have a financial or a drug problem to be exploited,” Weiner said.

Trump’s anti-diversity crusade was another foolish mistake because “if you want to spy in a nation like Somalia or Pakistan or China, it might be wise to have a workforce that is not made up exclusively of white guys, and who speak languages other than English,” Weiner said. “Diversity was one of the CIA’s few superpowers, and the mindless abolition of the effort to diversify the CIA’s officers and analysts was one of the most stupid self-inflicted wounds that Radcliffe could have delivered.”

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Sadly, Weiner says no “Robert Mueller” or “Barack Obama” is going to save the nation. What that takes is a massive upheaval from Americans.

“[T]he other day, several million Americans marched in the street to protest the Mad King. And just as only we can defeat ourselves, I think only we can save ourselves,” Weiner said.

Read the full Guardian report at this link.

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'This is an active CIA officer': Journalist reveals 'astonishing' detail in war plans chat

Earlier this month, a journalist was inadvertently included on a group text with more than a dozen Cabinet-level officials in President Donald Trump's administration. He's now carefully sharing some of the more scandalous revelations that were shared before he removed himself from the chat.

On Monday, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an article explaining how we was invited to a group text thread on the encrypted text messaging app Signal by White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. He recalled how the top national security officials like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe shared highly classified operational details about airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Goldberg then told MSNBC host Jen Psaki that as a longtime reporter in the national security field, he was floored by the lack of operational security exercised by those on the chat. He noted that it seemed "unbelievable" for people with the highest-level security clearances to be discussing sensitive information on a "commercial messaging app." He also initially wondered if he was being targeted in a "disinformation operation" by a hostile nation, before he decided to check online and see if there were strikes in Yemen happening when Hegseth said the strikes would be carried out.

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"I wanted to understand what was going on here," Goldberg said. "At the end of the day, the most obvious explanation is that it's just real ... Because I had never seen senior government officials act this way."

Psaki then compared the way the Trump administration officials were sharing classified information on Signal with the way she was required to handle classified information when she worked for former President Barack Obama. The MSNBC host recalled that when she read a "numbered copy" of a memo on Russian interference in the 2016 election, she had to do it in a SCIF (secure compartmentalized information facility) before giving it right back. She then asked Goldberg about one detail in which Ratcliffe allegedly shared the name of "somebody who sounded like a covert operative" when Cabinet officials were giving names of public officials who were their points of contact on the Yemen operation.

"Other people name other people who are publicly named, public figures. Ratcliffe names a person — I'm not going to say the name the whole, real name of this person who is going to be his liaison — and in the course of my reporting and trying to understand, I came to understand that this is an active CIA officer," Goldberg said. "His name has never been in public before ... And so, I was, I have to say, somewhat astonished that he would put this official's name into what is essentially an open channel."

Watch the video of Goldberg's comments below, or by clicking this link.

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'Insider risk': How DOGE might have revealed CIA secrets

Several incidents associated with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government budgets could expose secrets from the top spy agency, CNN reported Monday.

“The administration’s efforts to cut the workforce and audit spending at the CIA and elsewhere threaten to jeopardize some of the government’s most sensitive work, current and former US officials familiar with internal deliberations say,” write CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis, Phil Mattingly, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen.

Earlier in the month, an unclassified email that was “extraordinarily unusual,” according to CNN, was sent to the White House about possible layoffs may have divulged people slated to work undercover by first name and last initial. The CIA, led by former Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), is conducting a formal investigation into the matter, and the incident could impact international diplomacy.

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“There is … a concern that some US embassy positions that are actually filled by CIA officers under cover may now be at risk of being revealed — potentially angering the host nation and exposing companies or endangering CIA assets who are known to have met with past occupants of the role,” according to the report.

There is also concern that giving a worker at Elon Musk’s "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress) access to the government’s payment system could expose “highly classified CIA payments.” The government quickly built security infrastructure for the worker, building him "read-only" access.

“Literally every payment the US government makes goes through that system. Every. One,” a source told CNN.

Some CIA agents are also worried that firings could lead to resentful former employees who could divulge government secrets to foreign governments like Russia or China. More than 20 officers have already been fired due to their work on diversity. While this security risk is not new, officials told CNN the current circumstances make the fear more immediate.

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“Terminating someone who works for Department of Agriculture — even if they’re disgruntled, if they’re not accessing classified information, what’s the risk?” One of the network's sources said.

They added with intelligence agencies, “you take whatever number of employees who are gonna get cut loose and they have knowledge of sensitive programs — that by definition is an insider risk," they said. "You’re just rolling the dice that these folks are gonna honor their secrecy agreement and not volunteer to a hostile intelligence service."

“Taken together, those actions highlight the depth of unease among career officials that Trump’s efforts to speedily slim down the US government may be putting American secrets within the grasp of foreign spies and hackers,” the authors write.

“I’m not sure the administration really understands [that risk] and moreover, even if they understand, it’s not clear they care,” the official said. That risk is “real.”

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Click here to read CNN's report in full.

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Ex-CIA chief warns Trump’s 'careless' and 'chaotic' decisions could spark 'another world war'

President Donald Trump's second term officially got underway on Monday, January 20 when he was sworn into office by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.

Trump wasted no time issuing executive orders, from pardoning roughly 1500 of the January 6 defendants to calling for an end to birthright citizenship despite the fact that it is in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.

Trump also revoked security clearances for around 50 former intelligence and national security officials, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton and ex-CIA Directors Leon Panetta and John O. Brennan.

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In a New York Times op-ed, Panetta — who also served as defense secretary in the Obama Administration — warns that Trump is bringing a reputation for a "chaotic approach" to an "increasingly dangerous and threatening world."

"Mr. Trump has always prided himself on being a dealmaker, pledging in his campaign that he would resolve such conflicts in the first few days of his presidency," Panetta argues. "But precisely because it is a more dangerous world, that's unlikely to happen. And if he tries and fails, the United States will appear weak. There is concern that Mr. Trump may have already started off badly by threatening Greenland, the Panama Canal Zone and Canada. Those are the kind of careless and disruptive comments that only undermine American credibility when it comes to dealing with real-world crises."

Trump, according to Panetta, is facing foreign policy challenges that are "far different from and more threatening than what he had to confront in his first four years" as president.

"Autocrats that once operated in their own spheres of influence have now joined together in an axis of mutual support and aggression," the former CIA director warns. "Vladimir Putin of Russia is not just a temperamental bully, but also, a tyrant who invaded the sovereign democracy of Ukraine and continues to threaten democracies in the West. Xi Jinping of China has made clear that he is prepared for a potential Taiwan invasion and wants to compete with the United States as a leading military power. Kim Jong-un of North Korea is not just threatening democracy in South Korea, but has also sent drones and thousands of troops to Russia to fight Ukrainians."

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Panetta stresses that the United States will need leadership and "peace through strength," not chaos, in the months ahead.

"The president, as commander in chief, has the power and responsibility to determine America’s future security," the former Obama Administration official writes. "If he is careless with that awesome power, the United States could very well find itself in another world war."

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Leon Panetta's full New York Times op-ed is available at this link (subscription required).


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Trump’s secret calls to Putin means his 'basic loyalty' to US is compromised: ex-CIA chief

The former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) says it's likely that former President Donald Trump is a "source" of significant intelligence on U.S. operations on Russia's behalf, and called his patriotism into question.

The London-baased Daily Telegraph reported Thursday that former CIA director Leon Panetta — also a former Secretary of Defense in Barack Obama's administration — expressed alarm about the news of Trump's calls with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin after he left office. Panetta made the comments during a recent appearance on the One Decision podcast in response to the revelations journalist Bob Woodward revealed in his forthcoming book, "War."

"To have a president basically engaging with an adversary, who knows what deals are made… the mere fact a former president of the United States is having regular conversations with our primary adversary raises real questions about where is his basic loyalty," he said. "Is it really to the United States of America or is it to Donald Trump?

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"I think Donald Trump in many ways is naive about who Putin really is," Panetta said, adding that Putin "knows how to work a source, and he's got a source near the very top in this country" in reference to the former president.

"Why would you possibly — someone who wants to be president of the United States — have a continuing relationship with someone who is a tyrant and is basically our enemy?" He continued. "And that really is what the bottom line is, is that Trump has turned into a source for Putin, and somebody who can help him manipulate what he wants to get done," he added.

Panetta is merely the latest U.S. intelligence expert to suggest Trump is overly deferential to Putin. In September, former FBI director Andrew McCabe called the 45th president of the United States a "de facto Russian asset" given his tendency to accommodate Putin in their interactions. McCabe also made his comments on the One Decision podcast, which is hosted by former MI6 agent Sir Richard Dearlove.

"Donald Trump has given us many reasons to question his approach to the Russia problem in the United States, and I think his approach to interacting with Vladimir Putin, be it phone calls, face-to-face meetings, the things that he has said in public about Putin, all raise significant questions," McCabe told Dearlove.

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Woodward's book alleges that Trump ordered his aides out of the room when conducting as many as seven private calls with Putin at Mar-a-Lago, meaning the details of those calls remain unknown. However, the time period of the calls is particularly noteworthy, given that they took place before Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith seized classified documents Trump kept at his residence in defiance of the National Archives.

Also in 2021, the New York Times reported that the CIA had lost an unusually high number of informants due to them being either captured or killed. Many of those captured or killed informants were in countries who have an adversarial relationship with the U.S. like Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan.

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Click here to read the Telegraph's full report.

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'Putin knows a lot more than the American public': Ex-CIA director says the Russian leader has 'exploited' Trump

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