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Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard are coming for the spooks

The president-elect’s intelligence picks suggest a radical agenda

Photograph: AFP via Getty Images

Photograph: AFP via Getty Images

OF DONALD TRUMP’s nominees to high office, few are more suspicious of the government they are pegged to join than Tulsi Gabbard. She warns of a “slow-rolling coup” by “the entire permanent Washington machine”, as she describes it in “For Love of Country”, a campaign book published in April. Her list of putschists is long, catholic and spook-heavy: “the Democratic National Committee, propaganda media, Big Tech, the FBI, the CIA, and a whole network of rogue intelligence and law enforcement agents working at the highest levels of our government”. Yet she may soon oversee some of that machinery.

On November 13th Donald Trump chose Ms Gabbard as his nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a post that co-ordinates the work of the alphabet soup of 18 spy agencies in the country’s intelligence community. The news raised fears in the agencies and among America’s allies that intelligence will be distorted to suit Mr Trump’s preferences. And it heralds rifts within Mr Trump’s administration between hawks like Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio, nominated as national security adviser and secretary of state respectively, and radicals such as Ms Gabbard, who have argued for a softer line on China, Russia and Iran.

Mr Trump’s intelligence team is still taking shape. On November 12th he picked John Ratcliffe as CIA director. He is a former congressman who briefly served as DNI at the end of Mr Trump’s first term. At the FBI, Christopher Wray, the director, who was appointed by Mr Trump in 2017 to a ten-year term, seems likely to be replaced. In his first term, Mr Trump clashed repeatedly and frequently with the FBI and other agencies. He was angered by their reports that Russia had intervened on his behalf in the 2016 election. In 2020 he fired a string of top intelligence officials including Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who had declared that the 2020 election was not, as Mr Trump insisted, stolen.

That history suggests that Mr Trump and his appointees will seek dramatic reforms, even purges, in the spy agencies and at the FBI. The bureau, the premier federal law-enforcement agency, houses big counterintelligence and counterterrorism sections that collect and analyse intelligence. It is likely to be first in line for Mr Trump’s plans to neuter perceived enemies. Kash Patel, an inexperienced loyalist whom Mr Trump sought and failed to install as deputy CIA director in the dying days of his first administration, has been linked to Mr Wray’s job. “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” promised Mr Patel last December. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly…we’re putting you all on notice.”

The bureau might also be checked in other ways. Mr Trump and Ms Gabbard are both opposed to Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence (FISA) Act, which authorises electronic surveillance on American soil. It was renewed this year after a fierce debate in the Senate but will lapse in 2026. “The [FISA] court has proven to be a dependable rubber stamp for government requests,” argues Ms Gabbard (not inaccurately). If Mr Trump quashes it, the FBI will lose a major source of intelligence.

Other clues for Mr Trump’s plans might be found in the writings of those in his political orbit. Last year Project 2025, an initiative by the conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank to prepare for a Trump administration, published “Mandate for Leadership”. Dustin Carmack, a former aide to Mr Ratcliffe, contributed a chapter on intelligence. In May this year the America First Policy Institute published a similar volume, with a chapter on intelligence by Sam Faddis, a retired CIA officer who sought to overturn Mr Trump’s election defeat in 2020. Many of Mr Carmack’s proposed reforms are technocratic, such as efforts to improve intelligence sharing and streamline security clearances across agencies. He also expresses enthusiasm for covert action, in line with the views of traditional Republicans. Other proposals are more contentious.

Mr Carmack argues that “woke” culture in the spy agencies has replaced patriotism and competence. He says that the intelligence community  must “restore confidence in its political neutrality”, alleging that John Brennan, a former CIA director who was sharply critical of Mr Trump, used intelligence “as a political weapon”. And he urges the president to replace the leaders of the CIA’s directorates and mission centres—led by career officials rather than political appointees—to make them more “responsive” to the White House.

Mr Faddis goes further. He argues that American spies “today act as if they are an independent branch of government that does not answer to the president”. And he says that his own perusal of Hunter Biden’s laptop—a right-wing obsession also cited by Mr Carmack and Ms Gabbard—“suggested strongly that Joe Biden himself was compromised by a number of foreign actors, the Chinese Communist Party foremost amongst them”.

The Economist spoke to a dozen former and serving intelligence officials from America and European allies to ask them how they thought all this churn might affect American and allied agencies. Some urged calm. One American official said that he had briefed Ms Gabbard on the House Armed Services Committee and that she was less radical in private than in public. The DNI, in any case, is the most senior figure in American intelligence, but not always, or even usually, the most powerful. She oversees intelligence assessments and manages budgets, but does not directly run the agencies.

One European intelligence official pointed out that intelligence-sharing between his country and America actually improved during Mr Trump’s first term. Within the Five Eyes intelligence pact, made up of America, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, signals-intelligence gathering is so tightly integrated that it would be impossible to unravel without causing massive disruption to America itself. “The Five Eyes sharing always holds,” soothed the American official.

Others are less sanguine. Many mid-ranking intelligence officers are likely to leave, says one insider, fearful of falling foul of political loyalty tests. Mr Trump’s lax approach to security is another concern. In his first term he divulged secret intelligence to Russian officials, allowed unvetted foreigners to roam free at Mar-a-Lago, his club in Florida, and, infamously, carted off boxes of highly classified material when he left the presidency. More recently, his aides have proposed eliminating FBI background checks and granting immediate security clearances to staff even if they fail private-sector vetting.

OF DONALD TRUMP’s nominees to high office, few are more suspicious of the government they are pegged to join than Tulsi Gabbard. She warns of a “slow-rolling coup” by “the entire permanent Washington machine”, as she describes it in “For Love of Country”, a campaign book published in April. Her list of putschists is long, catholic and spook-heavy: “the Democratic National Committee, propaganda media, Big Tech, the FBI, the CIA, and a whole network of rogue intelligence and law enforcement agents working at the highest levels of our government”. Yet she may soon oversee some of that machinery.

On November 13th Donald Trump chose Ms Gabbard as his nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a post that co-ordinates the work of the alphabet soup of 18 spy agencies in the country’s intelligence community. The news raised fears in the agencies and among America’s allies that intelligence will be distorted to suit Mr Trump’s preferences. And it heralds rifts within Mr Trump’s administration between hawks like Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio, nominated as national security adviser and secretary of state respectively, and radicals such as Ms Gabbard, who have argued for a softer line on China, Russia and Iran.

Mr Trump’s intelligence team is still taking shape. On November 12th he picked John Ratcliffe as CIA director. He is a former congressman who briefly served as DNI at the end of Mr Trump’s first term. At the FBI, Christopher Wray, the director, who was appointed by Mr Trump in 2017 to a ten-year term, seems likely to be replaced. In his first term, Mr Trump clashed repeatedly and frequently with the FBI and other agencies. He was angered by their reports that Russia had intervened on his behalf in the 2016 election. In 2020 he fired a string of top intelligence officials including Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who had declared that the 2020 election was not, as Mr Trump insisted, stolen.

That history suggests that Mr Trump and his appointees will seek dramatic reforms, even purges, in the spy agencies and at the FBI. The bureau, the premier federal law-enforcement agency, houses big counterintelligence and counterterrorism sections that collect and analyse intelligence. It is likely to be first in line for Mr Trump’s plans to neuter perceived enemies. Kash Patel, an inexperienced loyalist whom Mr Trump sought and failed to install as deputy CIA director in the dying days of his first administration, has been linked to Mr Wray’s job. “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” promised Mr Patel last December. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly…we’re putting you all on notice.”

The bureau might also be checked in other ways. Mr Trump and Ms Gabbard are both opposed to Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence (FISA) Act, which authorises electronic surveillance on American soil. It was renewed this year after a fierce debate in the Senate but will lapse in 2026. “The [FISA] court has proven to be a dependable rubber stamp for government requests,” argues Ms Gabbard (not inaccurately). If Mr Trump quashes it, the FBI will lose a major source of intelligence.

Other clues for Mr Trump’s plans might be found in the writings of those in his political orbit. Last year Project 2025, an initiative by the conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank to prepare for a Trump administration, published “Mandate for Leadership”. Dustin Carmack, a former aide to Mr Ratcliffe, contributed a chapter on intelligence. In May this year the America First Policy Institute published a similar volume, with a chapter on intelligence by Sam Faddis, a retired CIA officer who sought to overturn Mr Trump’s election defeat in 2020. Many of Mr Carmack’s proposed reforms are technocratic, such as efforts to improve intelligence sharing and streamline security clearances across agencies. He also expresses enthusiasm for covert action, in line with the views of traditional Republicans. Other proposals are more contentious.

Mr Carmack argues that “woke” culture in the spy agencies has replaced patriotism and competence. He says that the intelligence community  must “restore confidence in its political neutrality”, alleging that John Brennan, a former CIA director who was sharply critical of Mr Trump, used intelligence “as a political weapon”. And he urges the president to replace the leaders of the CIA’s directorates and mission centres—led by career officials rather than political appointees—to make them more “responsive” to the White House.

Mr Faddis goes further. He argues that American spies “today act as if they are an independent branch of government that does not answer to the president”. And he says that his own perusal of Hunter Biden’s laptop—a right-wing obsession also cited by Mr Carmack and Ms Gabbard—“suggested strongly that Joe Biden himself was compromised by a number of foreign actors, the Chinese Communist Party foremost amongst them”.

The Economist spoke to a dozen former and serving intelligence officials from America and European allies to ask them how they thought all this churn might affect American and allied agencies. Some urged calm. One American official said that he had briefed Ms Gabbard on the House Armed Services Committee and that she was less radical in private than in public. The DNI, in any case, is the most senior figure in American intelligence, but not always, or even usually, the most powerful. She oversees intelligence assessments and manages budgets, but does not directly run the agencies.

One European intelligence official pointed out that intelligence-sharing between his country and America actually improved during Mr Trump’s first term. Within the Five Eyes intelligence pact, made up of America, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, signals-intelligence gathering is so tightly integrated that it would be impossible to unravel without causing massive disruption to America itself. “The Five Eyes sharing always holds,” soothed the American official.

Others are less sanguine. Many mid-ranking intelligence officers are likely to leave, says one insider, fearful of falling foul of political loyalty tests. Mr Trump’s lax approach to security is another concern. In his first term he divulged secret intelligence to Russian officials, allowed unvetted foreigners to roam free at Mar-a-Lago, his club in Florida, and, infamously, carted off boxes of highly classified material when he left the presidency. More recently, his aides have proposed eliminating FBI background checks and granting immediate security clearances to staff even if they fail private-sector vetting.

Ms Gabbard’s Russophile tendencies are particularly jarring. “Democrats”, she complained in her book, “don’t want a peaceful relationship with Russia at all…How would their friends in the military-industrial complex make trillions of dollars from the fear they fomented in America and Europe by stoking the fires of the new cold war?” Some in the intelligence world believe that European agencies might start holding back human-intelligence reports or “sanitising” them of information that would previously have been shared. For her part, Ms Gabbard is clear about the ongoing threats she sees emanating from the intelligence agencies which, she warns, “are so dangerous that even our elected officials are afraid to cross them”. The spies are on notice. 

Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.

Author: Editors Desk

Source: The Economist

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