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New in SpyWeek: Tulsi Bids for Spycatcher Primacy as Chinese, Russian Threats Persist

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Jeff Stein's avatar
Jeff Stein
Nov 09, 2025
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (ODNI)

ODNI Move on FBI: Russia-friendly Tulsi Gabbard and her MAGA allies in Congress are making a bid to wrest counterintelligence—the art of catching adversary spies and rooting out domestic threats—from the nearly century long grip of the FBI. “Gabbard’s office seems to believe that the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division is irredeemably politicized—which is to say anti-Trump,” Quinta Jurecic and Shane Harris reported in The Atlantic. “If we do nothing,” a commenter in an administration memo soliciting opinions warned, “the same deep state actors who have egregiously weaponized counterintelligence for political purposes will be empowered.” The FBI Agents Association, with many friends on Capitol Hill, is fighting back.

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