New in SpyWeek: Trump's CIA Dings 2016 Russia Interference Report
Also: NSC chaos, Move to slim ODNI, Debate on Iran damage, FBI HQ move, More Chinese spies, ISIS agents, Tulsi's exclusion and rant
NSC VACUUM A report found chaos reigns at Marco Rubio’s slimmed-down National Security Council. Important meetings aren’t held, career staffers are often in the dark about what’s expected of them, and some people or their institutions try to take advantage of power vacuums. (Politico)
SLIMMING THE ODNI: Sen. Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has introduced a bill to overhaul the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Intelligence Community Efficiency and Effectiveness Act would cap the full-time staff at the ODNI at 650—down from roughly 1,600—by eliminating positions and reallocating resources to other agencies.
The bill would eliminate the DNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) and transfer its duties to the FBI; redesignate the National Counterterrorism Center to include counternarcotics but restrict its focus to foreign intelligence; and shift the biosecurity and counterproliferation functions to the CIA.
The bill is also another reminder of the diminishing influence of DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who has been cast out from among Trump’s courtiers after she posted a strange video warning about nuclear Armageddon. Gabbard has overseen a 20 percent staff reduction from a peak of nearly 2,000 employees, but Cotton feels she needs to do more.
Cotton’s bill would also shut down the National Intelligence University, an accredited, degree-granting institution that has been in existence since the 1960s.
Critics, such as Michael Bennett, a former senior leader at the ODNI’s Office of Human Capital, warn that the bill risks weakening U.S. readiness amid rising global threats. “Capping ODNI staff at 650 and eliminating analytic outsourcing might sound like efficiency, but it ignores current realities,” Bennett wrote on LinkedIn. “Hybrid warfare, AI-generated misinformation, cyberattacks, and gray-zone operations require deeper coordination, not less.”
Writing in The Washington Examiner, former NSA officer John Schindler said moving the NCSC to the FBI would be “nothing short of disastrous” as the bureau has proven itself time and again incapable of managing that critical mission effectively, without partisan political interference.
Gabbard, who has been conspicuously silent of late (save an unhinged rant on X against Washington Post intelligence reporter Ellen Nakashima), told MeriTalk she is working to “identify inefficiencies across the intelligence community, confront and address deep-rooted failures, and enact serious reforms that will refocus ODNI and the IC on our core mission of protecting the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.” Just not fast enough, apparently.
TEHRAN CHATTER: Intercepted communications among senior Iranian officials reveal that June’s U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities caused significantly less damage than President Trump publicly claimed. Tehran insiders said the strikes “were less devastating than expected,” challenging narratives of full-scale destruction. (The Washington Post)
RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA: The CIA revisited the 2016 intelligence community assessment (ICA) that concluded Russia helped Trump win his first term—a finding that had long roiled the president and strained his relationship with the agency. The review found the assessment was fundamentally sound, though weakened by rushed deadlines, political pressure, and thin sourcing. Media coverage of the review revealed just how polarized and politicized the issue has become, with outlets offering wildly divergent takes.
The lessons-learned review by the Directorate of Analysis slams what it calls the intelligence community’s most debated judgment—that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump win—as overstated. The judgment was based on a single, highly-classified report that had been collected in June but wasn’t shared outside the agency. The review did not dispute the credibility and quality of the serialized report but found it unworthy of the CIA’s and the FBI’s “high confidence” level, which the agency typically assigns to information from multiple, high-quality sources. Then-Director John Brennan, a veteran CIA analyst and object of Trumpian ire, “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness.” Ouch.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe commissioned the review in May, picking up an effort he began as Director of National Intelligence during Trump’s first term to discredit the original assessment. “Agency heads at the time created a politically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process around an issue essential to our democracy,” he said in a press release. Ratcliffe went further in an interview with the New York Post, saying “This was Obama, Comey, Clapper and Brennan deciding ‘We’re going to screw Trump.’”
The review also noted a dispute over the inclusion of a two-page annex summarizing the discredited dossier from former MI6 officer Christopher Steele—at the FBI's insistence. CIA veteran Beth Sanner, who helped draft the assessment, told The New York Times she opposed including the dossier, calling it a “poison pill that forever undercut the analytic integrity of the ICA.” Current CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis weighed in on X, noting that “Brennan and Comey personally intervened to insert the Steele dossier's lies into intelligence analysis.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford said the Ratcliffe review didn’t go far enough. The Arkansas Republican fired off a letter to President Trump, calling the CIA review a “whitewash” that “fails to disclose critical information, offers misleading judgements [sic], and protects the deep state.” Crawford urged Trump to read a 2018 report produced under his predecessor, former Rep. Devin Nunes—and written by then-staffer and current FBI Director Kash Patel—that “documents efforts within the CIA to manufacture the Trump/Russia collusion narrative.” Crawford told Just the News that his letter prompted the agency on Thursday to hand over the report it held “hostage” for seven years. Stay tuned.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s own heavily-redacted report in 2020 on the assessment (when current Secretary of State Marco Rubio led the panel) affirmed the ICA’s tradecraft. So did the Ratcliffe review.
However, the CIA’s lessons learned review does hint at a “potential political motive” behind the decision to publish both classified and unclassified versions before the presidential transition. Rushed judgments, like the flawed assessments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, are asking for trouble.
G-MEN GONE WILD: A former FBI supervisor repeatedly solicited and used prostitutes during both domestic and overseas assignments and used his government cell phone to make payments, according to the Justice Department’s Inspector General.
The IG’s summary of the case did not provide the time frame for the alleged misconduct, nor the locations where it occurred. It notes, without explanation, that the criminal prosecution was declined.
What’s going on at the bureau? A report released this year—thanks to a New York Times lawsuit—details FBI agents partying and paying for sex in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand between 2009 and 2018. The Inspector General found four FBI officials accepted commercial sex overseas, and a fifth had solicited sex overseas. A sixth official committed misconduct by failing to report the behavior, the inspector general found. Such reckless behavior has been more commonly linked to Secret Service agents than the FBI.
Eric Holder, the attorney general under President Barack Obama, said in a 2015 staff memo that soliciting prostitutes “threatens the core mission of the Department, not simply because it invites extortion, blackmail, and leaks of sensitive or classified information, but also because it undermines the Department’s efforts to eradicate the scourge of human trafficking.”
KASH’S KORNER: FBI Director Kash Patel is preparing to shut down the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover building and relocate the bureau’s HQ to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center three blocks away in downtown D.C. The Reagan building was home to the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development. The move reverses a bipartisan plan to build an FBI campus in Greenbelt, Maryland—one that the re-elected Trump vowed to block.
“They were going to build an FBI headquarters three hours away in Maryland, a liberal state,” Trump said during a speech at the Justice Department in March. “We’re not going to let that happen.” (Greenbelt is actually a 30-minute drive from downtown D..C and 16 minutes by Metro.)
“We will fight this,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told the Baltimore Sun.
“Moving the FBI from the Hoover Building to the Reagan Building isn’t a plan, it’s a punt,” said Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Virginia Democrats. The Greenbelt campus is already funded with $555 million, but it would take a decade to complete. The Reagan Building, meanwhile, will require extensive security upgrades to accommodate the FBI. The Trump administration has put in a formal request to reprogram the allocated funds.
BEIJING SPY SEASON: The Justice Department broke up what it says is a Chinese spy ring aimed at U.S. military personnel and installations. Yuance Chen, 38, and Liren “Ryan” Lai, 39, appeared in court Tuesday on charges of allegedly spying on behalf of the MSS. The two men are accused of gathering information on Navy servicemembers and bases, assisting with efforts to recruit other MSS agents, and facilitating a $10,000 cash dead drop in Northern California to fund recruitment efforts. Lai, who entered the U.S. on a tourist visa, allegedly recruited Chen in 2021.
ISIS PROPAGANDA NETWORK: A federal judge found Ashraf Al Safoo, 41, guilty of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS by leading the Khattab Media Foundation—an online propaganda network pushing violent jihad through social media and extremist content. Arrested in Chicago in 2018, Al Safoo coordinated pro-ISIS videos, and urged followers to “spread terror” in enemy communities. A judge convicted him on multiple charges, including conspiracy to provide material support and transmitting threats electronically. The convictions carry a maximum sentence of up to 130 years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for October 9. The case underscores ongoing online threats from extremist networks.
Pocket Litter
The FBI blocked an investigation into allegations that the Chinese Communist Party manufactured fake driver’s licenses and shipped them to the U.S. in a scheme to influence the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden because it would "contradict" then-FBI Director Christopher Wray’s congressional testimony, according to Fox News.
A 24-year-old member of the Terrorgram Collective was indicted in California on charges including soliciting the murder of federal officials. Prosecutors say Noah Lamb actively created and promoted a "hit list" targeting high-value U.S. officials and private-sector leaders based on race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity. (DOJ)
Jeff Stein contributed to this story.
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