The “assault on intelligence” continues: Politicized investigations severely compromise U.S. national security
The relationship between Donald Trump and the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) has been consistently strained. Recent events, however, have turned strain to dysfunction in the accelerating effort to politicize both intelligence product and the analytical processes used in producing that product as President Trump wields executive power to exact retribution from those who have the temerity to challenge him and his policies.
From manipulating the assessments of damage caused to Iranian nuclear facilities by operation Midnight Hammer, to promoting a report criticizing the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) addressing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the Trump administration has signaled that political utility to this president, rather than impartial analysis, is the standard by which intelligence work is to be measured.
Moreover, the administration has made clear that members of the IC who fail to observe this standard will be dealt with harshly, as demonstrated by the recent Department of Justice criminal investigation opened into the supposed wrongdoing of two former top IC officials—former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey. These investigations were initiated following a “CIA Note” released by Director John Ratcliffe that attempts to impugn the tradecraft that was employed in preparing the ICA. The DOJ opened this investigation, despite the apparent absence of criminal wrongdoing and despite the fact that the five-year statute of limitations that would apply to perjury or any other conceivable applicable criminal charge has long since run. The unmistakable message is that revenge and retribution now guide this administration’s response where intelligence analyses and conclusions conflict with the administration’s political priorities.
A marginalized Director of National Intelligence uninterested in protecting the interests of the IC
Congress created the position of “Director of National Intelligence” (DNI) in 2004 to serve as head of the Intelligence Community and as the principal advisor to the president and the National Security Council. Upon returning to the presidency in January 2025, Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard to be DNI in his new administration, and Gabbard was narrowly confirmed by the Senate in February.
Gabbard has never worked in the IC. In 2020, while serving in Congress, she co-sponsored legislation which sought to repeal Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, arguably the nation’s most important intelligence collection program, while also insisting that the IC “has not been transparent or honest with the American people or even Congress about what they’ve been doing.” Only during the confirmation process for DNI did Gabbard change course and endorse Section 702.
Almost immediately upon assuming the DNI position, Gabbard became embroiled in controversy over her congressional testimony about the sensitivity of the information disclosed during Signal group chats among senior Trump officials discussing the details of military operations against the Houthis in Yemen. The credibility of her testimony was assailed in the press with some in Congress insisting that she had committed perjury.
DNI Gabbard’s strength and standing within the Trump administration have been called into question recently after the president twice brushed aside her testimony advising Congress that the IC believed Iran was not close to developing a nuclear weapon. Trump testily rejected that assessment saying, “I don’t care what she said,” while substituting his own judgment that Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear bomb. The disagreement resurrected long-standing questions about how the uneasy relationship between the president and the IC might impact U.S. national security in today’s volatile world.
Trump’s strained relationship with the IC
Given her expressed doubts about the integrity of the IC, Gabbard’s nomination as DNI seems to perpetuate Trump’s own history of antipathy towards that Community stemming, in part, from the publicity generated by his well-known disinterest in reading the President’s Daily Brief or receiving any substantive briefing on its contents. As has been reported, this is a president whose attention span is taxed by a single page of bullet points; a “two-minute man” with patience for no more than half a page of information.
Trump’s reported indifference to detail directly challenges an IC devoted to reducing the uncertainty surrounding foreign activities, capabilities, or leaders’ intentions that affect U.S. national security. The tradecraft standards used in producing analytic products include describing sources, clearly acknowledging uncertainty and levels of judgmental confidence, distinguishing between underlying information and analysts’ judgments and assumptions, exploring alternatives, and explaining change or consistency in judgments over time. These tradecraft standards are intended to assure that intelligence analysis provided to policymakers has been assembled and vetted with an attention to detail commensurate with the gravity of the issue addressed. As it turns out, however, these standards are antithetical to a president with little interest in detail, a personal assessment that “I’m, like, a smart person,” and an unwarranted reliance upon gut instincts.
During Trump’s first term as president, he voiced his animosity for intelligence officials, portraying them as a “deep state” out to get him stemming, in significant part, from the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that concluded with “high confidence” that Vladimir Putin had ordered an extensive influence campaign to affect the 2016 U.S. presidential election where “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.” Trump viewed the ICA as discrediting the 2016 election results and tainting his victory.
Now, in his second term, Trump’s assault on the 2017 ICA has continued with his new CIA director commissioning the aforementioned internal review of that 2017 ICA, notwithstanding that it is already one of the most closely scrutinized documents ever produced by American intelligence. While this so-called “CIA Note” found flaws in certain aspects of the process used in producing this extremely sensitive document on a very short timeline, it does not dispute the substantive conclusions produced by that process—that the Russians sought to interfere in the 2016 election, disparaging Hilary Clinton, and promoting the election of Donald Trump. Notably, a two-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee reviewed the same processes, tradecraft, and analytical integrity that the Note addresses while concluding that no witness testifying before the Committee claimed any attempts or pressure to “politicize the findings” of the ICA. Furthermore, John Durham, a Justice Department attorney handpicked by Attorney General William Barr during Trump’s first term to serve as Special Counsel to report on matters related to intelligence activities and investigations arising out of the 2016 presidential campaigns, also examined the C.I.A.’s and other intelligence agencies’ work on the 2017 ICA but made no substantive mention of it in his final report.
Ignoring these conclusions, current CIA Director John Ratcliffe brandished the Note like a smoking gun, insisting it confirmed that the former heads of the FBI and CIA, along with the director of national intelligence, had “manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals—all to get Trump.” Unsurprisingly, the criminal referrals of Comey and Brennan soon followed.
Trump never accepted the findings of the ICA. In a joint press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland in July 2018, he publicly accepted Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful denial” of any involvement with the 2016 election, saying: “[Dan Coats] came to me [and] said, they think it’s Russia;” but Trump then aligned himself with the former KGB apparatchik announcing, “I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
Trump has, in the words of Jack Goldsmith, “viciously and inappropriately attacked” the IC while engaging in long-running feuds with senior IC executives like John Brennan, resulting in the revocation of Brennan’s security clearance in July 2018. As it turned out, Brennan’s excommunication was simply the prelude to Trump’s second term. On the day of his second inauguration, Trump issued an executive order stripping 49 individuals of their security clearances, including one former DNI (James Clapper), three former CIA directors (John Brennan, again, Michael Hayden, and Leon Panetta), and a former NSA director (Hayden) for having signed a letter ascribing the 2020 reporting surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop to Russian disinformation. As it happens, the executive order used to revoke the clearances of these individuals was the brainchild of none other than John Ratcliffe, confirmed just weeks later as Trump’s new CIA director.
Two months later, in March 2025, Trump issued a presidential memorandum declaring that it was no longer in the national interest for more than a dozen other individuals to have access to classified information. The targets of this memorandum included a former president, a former vice president, and two former secretaries of state.
Critical policy and strategy decisions should benefit from integrated all-source analysis that is apolitical and built upon accurate objective facts and judgments predicated upon analytical experience. This president, however, has limited interest in such detail, and when his apathy for the intellectual rigor needed for serious policy judgments is exposed, he resorts to vilifying the “deep state” messenger—the U.S. Intelligence Community—knowing full well that professional appreciation for the extraordinarily sensitive environment in which they operate assures their silence.
That professional restraint remains the order of the day for those still laboring within the IC, although recognition of the dangers posed by this norm-breaking president and his unserious approach to diplomatic and military matters has precipitated an unprecedented level of criticism by former intelligence officials. Both Michael Hayden, a former director of both CIA and NSA, and James Clapper, DNI under President Obama, have written books offering unflattering assessments of Trump’s problematic relationship with the IC and hostility to intelligence analysis that challenges his worldview. These criticisms mark a sharp departure from the apolitical environment in which the IC has functioned since the extensive reforms enacted by Congress following the 1975 Church and Pike committee hearings that exposed significant intelligence abuses during the highly publicized “Year of Intelligence.”
Trump’s efforts to politicize intelligence and denigrate the IC
The overriding danger posed by Trump’s treatment of the IC is the politicization of intelligence. Post-Watergate reforms sought to legitimize intelligence activities while furnishing the rigorous oversight needed to create public trust. We are now faced with an incurious, intellectually obtuse commander-in-chief who characterizes as “politicized” every occasion upon which analysis produced by the IC differs from his preferred worldview. It is therefore essential that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) be an advocate for the kind of all-source analysis that reflects the IC’s traditional high-quality tradecraft. Recent events appear to confirm that Tulsi Gabbard lacks the ability to be that DNI. The IC is now less effective because it is burdened by unqualified, obsequious leadership determined to corral and control independent judgment.
Even a cursory look at the administration’s handling of the damage assessment following the Iranian attack demonstrates the point. Trump’s first act of consequence after the attack was to issue a claim that the Iranian nuclear facilities had been “obliterated.” When a preliminary intelligence assessment prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reportedly evaluated the damage caused by the attack as more limited than claimed by Trump, the president accused the report, and by extension the intelligence analysts who prepared it, of “demeani[ng] the great work of our B-2 pilots.”
In an administration where the first requirement for membership is unrestrained sycophancy, every official with access to reliable intelligence would have echoed Trump’s “obliterated” description if supported by that reliable intelligence. Unable to produce intelligence that supported Trump’s claimed “obliteration,” the administration, instead, countered with a release by the CIA, headed by the ever-loyal John Ratcliffe, insisting that an undisclosed “body of credible evidence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent targeted strikes.” While “severely damaged” isn’t synonymous with “obliterated,” it was close enough to save face for the president’s exaggerated claims. Then, to further impugn the DIA assessment, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, condemned it as “flat out wrong” while insisting it had been leaked by “an anonymous low-level loser in the intelligence community.” Publicly silent throughout this exchange was the DNI who, by statute, serves as head of the Intelligence Community.
To further buoy the president’s image, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hosted a news conference to discuss the Iran strikes on June 26, 2025. The tone for the conference was set when Hegseth, without apparent embarrassment, announced that “Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history.” (Presumably Operation Overlord—the invasion of Europe in June 1944—had slipped his mind.) Hegseth spent the rest of his speaking time minimizing the preliminary damage assessment prepared by the DIA and criticizing the media for its obsession with attacking Trump.
Denigrating the IC undermines its ability to protect the nation’s interests
The administration’s gratitude to the military personnel who executed the president’s orders to attack Iran is well-deserved, but the nation’s next steps in addressing the Iranian nuclear conundrum will almost certainly be predicated more upon the considered analyses of the nation’s intelligence professionals. Yet Trump has persistently sought to politicize the IC and to bend its work to his will. Disrespected spies are unlikely to perform their critical tasks with peak motivation and efficiency. Politically motivated trash-talking like that from Leavitt and Hegseth decimates morale within the IC, since that community relies on government officials to defend its reputation in view of the secrecy of its work.
President Trump is obsessed with his reputation, but if he cannot recognize that the politicization of the U.S. Intelligence Community poses one of the greatest threats to national security, the impact on his cherished legacy will be profound.
George W. Croner was the principal litigation counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the National Security Agency (NSA). He is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in its national security program and a member of CERL’s Advisory Council. You can follow him on X (@GeorgeCroner) and find a list of his publications at FPRI.org. Read his full bio here.
Image: Jessica/stock.adobe.com