The CIA was created by Congress in 1947 in response to the lack of inter-agency communication before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.
The U.S. Navy intercepted information but it was not communicated to anyone who could take action to protect the Navy‘s fleet in Hawaii and thousands of Americans died.
The CIA, the modern Department of Defense and other federal institutions were created to ensure unfiltered, unbiased intelligence is provided to the U.S. president, Congress and American military personnel.
“These institutions are meant to protect us from surprises, and to give policymakers the truth, even when it is uncomfortable or inconvenient,” U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Warner delivered an address titled “The Politicization of Intelligence: A Threat to Our National Security” in which he warned that President Donald Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have undermined the independence of the nation’s intelligence community with personnel firings, revoked clearances and retaliatory reassignments that have silenced decades of expertise, punished analysts for telling the truth and endangered America’s ability to confront threats from adversaries.
According to Warner, intelligence personnel are career officials who put duty before politics and serve under Republican and Democratic administrations. They swear an oath to the U.S. Constitution, not to any president.
“As assessments grounded in fact are being shelved in favor of conspiracy theories, our adversaries are conspiring, sharing intelligence and military capabilities, and strategizing over how to weaken the United States while advancing a very different authoritarian vision for the world,” Warner said.
He said he is also afraid that the integrity of American intelligence is being sacrificed for the convenience of partisanship. The issue is not about a partisan disagreement but about whether American intelligence will continue to “speak truth to power,” or be blinded by political pressure.
“History shows us what happens when intelligence is ignored, manipulated or kept from those who need it most,” Warner said.
ICYMI: American intelligence news
- Explainer: Getting to know Tulsi Gabbard
- DNI Gabbard top adviser Joe Kent directed rewriting of American intelligence
- Mark Warner poses questions to American intelligence leaders in op-ed
- Classified or not classified? Senate Intelligence Committee discusses ‘Signalgate’
- Senate confirms Joe Kent to head Counterterrorism Center
While not perfect, the system has worked most of the time. In the 1970s, the Church Committee revealed abuses and why strong congressional oversight is essential. Congress then established the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1976 and a U.S. House counterpart the following year.
“Today, while not flawless, these committees remain the best check we have to ensure our intelligence agencies uphold American values and laws, avoid repeating past mistakes and learn from them when they do occur,” Warner said.
Failures of the system include not predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, the inability to “connect the dots” before September 11, 2001, and events which led to the Iraq War when intelligence was distorted to fit policy preferences.
“Intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda were inflated and cherry-picked. Analysts who raised doubts were ignored. The result was a devastating war in Iraq, fought under false pretenses, that cost thousands of American servicemembers their lives and limbs,” Warner said.
The intelligence community learned from the failures. After September 11, Congress placed additional safeguards and created a new position: Director of National Intelligence. The goal, to better coordinate intelligence objectives, is the commitment Warner asked Gabbard during her Senate confirmation hearing. She assured the committee and Americans she would protect the intelligence community’s independence and not politicize it.
However, six months into the Trump Administration, the country has seen the opposite from Gabbard and Trump.
“We’ve seen career FBI agents – people who have risked their lives for this country – forced out of their positions simply for investigating crimes connected to the January 6 insurrection. These were professionals following the law, performing their sworn duties, and yet their service was treated as disloyalty,” Warner said. “Careers were ended, and decades of expertise were discarded, just for doing the job they were entrusted to do.”
The National Intelligence Council‘s chair and deputy chair were dismissed because they documented and provided evidence in an assessment that the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua criminal network did not align with Trump’s preferred narrative of events. According to Warner, Maduro’s regime and TdA are “ruthless actors who pose real threats but punishing intelligence officials in particular for telling the truth only weakens our ability to confront them effectively.”
The three-star general who led the Defense Intelligence Agency was removed after analysts produced an evidence-based assessment that showed Iran’s nuclear program had not been “obliterated” as Trump claimed.
Analysts have been stripped of security clearances or reassigned just when their expertise is most necessary. Gabbard “personally revoked the clearances of at least 37 individuals in a transparently political act of vengeance, sweeping aside decades of experience with the stroke of a pen, and, in at least one case, exposing an official working under cover.”
Congressional requirements have been ignored, oversight stymied and obstructed, and inspectors general and personnel silenced or removed. Sensitive intelligence has been declassified and released to the public, clearly for political purposes.
“These disclosures actually risk revealing the identities of assets, the techniques we rely on, and the credibility of ongoing operation all for the sake of advancing a political narrative. The very tools that protect lives and maintain America’s strategic advantage are being treated as leverage in a partisan game,” Warner said.
The so-called “Russia hoax” assessment was a coordinated, unanimous finding by the entire intelligence community but the Trump Administration devalues the finding. The Senate Intelligence Committee reviewed and validated the assessment, including Republican members of the committee such as then-Committee Chairman Sen. Marco Rubio, who is now U.S. Secretary of State. The assessment concluded that Russia did conduct a campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election in order to create chaos and undermine faith in American democracy, but also to boost Trump’s candidacy for president.
“And, as troubling as all of this is, what may be most astonishing is who seems to be calling the shots. Not seasoned national security leaders. Not career intelligence professionals. But conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a figure who has called the 9/11 terrorist attacks ‘an inside job,’ who has described herself as a ‘pro-white nationalist’ and a ‘proud Islamophobe, who has made openly racist and anti-Muslim statements,” Warner said.
Warner related a story that a few weeks ago he and his staff had arranged to visit the National Geo-spatial-Intelligence Agency in Virginia so that he could perform constitutional oversight duties and meet with intelligence professionals who are also his constituents. Loomer blocked the visit at the last minute.
“Mr. President: I must also ask you: why is this administration going to war against the very professionals sworn to keep our country safe? Why are decades of service and sacrifice tossed aside, because they are obliged to provide unbiased truth? Because it is inconvenient? Because their assessments are not what the DNI and the president want to hear?” Warner said on the Senate floor.
If the intelligence community spends time chasing down conspiracy theories and not monitoring terrorist networks, cyber threats and foreign adversaries, Warner said consequences will result. If analysts stop flagging real dangers out of fear of political retaliation, if experienced officers walk away because their expertise will be dismissed or punished, the intelligence community will be weakened and every American family will be at risk.
“That is what makes the current moment so alarming. We are dismantling trust in institutions that took generations to build. We are eroding morale among some of the most dedicated professionals in public service. And we are sending a clear message to young officers: don’t bother building a career in intelligence if you plan to tell the truth,” Warner said.
Meanwhile, America‘s adversaries around the world are continuing to plan real threats of cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, nuclear proliferation, terrorist attacks, transnational criminal organizations.
“We can disagree about policy, but we cannot allow the facts themselves to be corrupted. The intelligence community must remain independent, professional and committed to the Constitution above all else.”
Support AFP
Share
Rebecca Barnabi
