Gabbard fires leaders of intelligence group that wrote Venezuela assessment that contradicted Trump
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired the top two officials at the National Intelligence Council, weeks after the council wrote an assessment that contradicted President Donald Trump’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process.
Gabbard removed Michael Collins, the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, as well as his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, according to a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office.
The actions are the latest purge by Gabbard, who has said she is fighting politicization of the intelligence community but has removed or sidelined officials perceived to not support Trump’s political agenda.
The NIC is the top U.S. intelligence community body for analyzing classified intelligence and providing secret assessments to the president and other top policymakers. Its reports include spy agencies’ annual global threat assessment and studies of the possible causes of anomalous health incidents, also known as Havana syndrome, and the origins of the coronavirus that led to the pandemic in 2020.
“Having spent five years working at the NIC, I can personally attest the org is the heartbeat of apolitical US all-source analysis, traditionally drawing the best of the IC’s [intelligence community’s] analysts together to tackle and produce assessments on the hardest issues,” Jonathan Panikoff, former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East, wrote on his X account.
“Anything that reduces its independence because policymakers don’t like the independent conclusions it reaches, is the definition of politicization they are decrying. Mike and Maria are unbelievable leaders and IC professionals, not political actors,” wrote Panikoff, now at the Atlantic Council think tank.
The firings were first reported by Fox News.
“The Director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the Intelligence Community,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence spokesperson said when asked about the firings.
“I am concerned about the apparent removal of senior leadership at the National Intelligence Council without any explanation except vague accusations made in the media,” Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “Absent evidence to justify the firings, the workforce can only conclude that their jobs are contingent on producing analysis that is aligned with the President’s agenda, rather than truthful and apolitical.”
The firings took place a week after the ODNI released a partially declassified intelligence assessment, dated April 7 and produced by the National Intelligence Council, that found that the Venezuelan government is most likely not directing the activities of the gang known as Tren de Aragua, or facilitating its operations in the United States.
The document, whose existence was first reported by The Washington Post, undercut Trump’s stated rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process. Trump invoked the 18th-century act in mid-March, proclaiming without evidence that Tren de Aragua is perpetrating an “invasion” of the United States “at the direction” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government.
The April 7 intelligence assessment, known as a “Sense of the Community Memorandum,” was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the New York-based Freedom of the Press Foundation. [Continue reading…]