Thread by @usacsmret

U.S. Intelligence Institutionally Politicized Toward Democrats via @freebeacon freebeacon.com/national-secur…

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have become bastions of political liberals and the pro-Democratic Party views of intelligence personnel have increased under President Donald Trump, according to a journal article by a former CIA analyst.

John Gentry, who spent 12 years as a CIA analyst, criticized former senior intelligence leaders, including Brenan, Clapper, and former deputy CIA director Michael Morell, for breaking decades-long prohibitions of publicly airing their liberal political views in attacking Trump.

The institutional bias outlined in a lengthy article in the quarterly International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence risks undermining the role of intelligence in support of government leaders charged with making policy decisions.

Iin 2016 observers of U.S. intelligence began to wonder if the CIA's once-firm prohibition on partisan politics had changed, and to ponder whether a new kind of politicization had arisen: namely, institutionally embedded, partisan bias," Gentry wrote.

"The attacks on Trump were unprecedented for intelligence officers in their substance, tone, and volume," he stated. "Critics went far beyond trying to correct Trump's misstatements about U.S. intelligence; they attacked him as a human being."

Gentry, currently a professor at Georgetown and Columbia Universities, provides a detailed analysis of whether the 16-agency U.S. intelligence community and the CIA in particular have become institutional partisans supporting the Democratic Party.

The article was written before the conclusions of the investigative report on Russian collusion by special counsel Robert Mueller were made public by Attorney General William Barr, who told Congress the Trump campaign was spied on by the U.S. government.

Recent books by Clapper and Michael Hayden justify political attacks on Trump based on both former officials' claims that the president has adopted a different world view. "For former intelligence officials to make such blatantly partisan statements is unprecedented" Gentry said.

Regarding Morell, a career analyst who endorsed Clinton, Gentry criticized Morell's opinion article in the New York Times during the 2016 campaign that said his intelligence training had taught him that the nation would be safer with Clinton as president.

"Morell's claim that his CIA career qualifies him to make political judgments about domestic issues is incorrect," Gentry said. "He was trained and authorized to ‘make the call' about foreign intelligence issues within the classified, internal world of the U.S. government …

Other former intelligence officials, including former national intelligence officer Paul Pillar and former deputy director for intelligence John McLaughlin also appeared in left-leaning news media—New York Times, Washington Post, and MSNBC—to bash the president.

Gentry also notes that criticism of Trump by current and former officials contrasts sharply from intelligence officials' responses to criticism from Democratic presidents, such as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

Former House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra was quoted as saying he was told by CIA station chiefs "every time I went anywhere" the Obama administration was "throwing them under the bus" regarding past harsh interrogation of terrorists.

NSA officials also were "hung out to dry" by the Obama administration following the leaks by renegade contractor Edward Snowden.
Yet, unlike Trump, these intelligence officials did not speak out publicly or leak against Obama or Clinton to the extent that has been seen recently.

Leaks have increased sharply in an apparent bid to undermine Trump, and Gentry said a long-held prohibition against discussing partisan politics in the office has been set aside. Anti-Trump conversations are common in CIA analytical units, and on Facebook.

"In the US and elsewhere, liberals often worried that intelligence and security agencies were running amok. Now, ‘progressives' welcome an ideologically center-left ‘deep state,' built in part upon policies like Obama’s as a check on Trump and conservatives are complaining."

An example was former CIA director Brennan's announcement in July 2017—six months after leaving office—that CIA officers had an obligation to "refuse to carry out" Trump administration orders if Trump fired Mueller. Brennan further decried Trump as unstable.

"The government has traditionally and wisely declined to ask job applicants and civil service employees about their political affiliations but President Obama, especially, got around the policy by mandating hiring from demographic groups known to be generally pro-Democratic,"

Kenneth deGraffenreid, former White House National Security Council intelligence director in the Reagan administration, said Gentry provided an excellent summary of CIA politicization that "confirms what those of us who have been working for intelligence reform have observed...."

"Today the IC and especially the CIA jealously envision themselves as the purveyors of all foreign policy wisdom. In this role it does not welcome other opinions and believes that U.S. officials should limit their reading and thinking to the CIA-provided intelligence analysis."

The proper role of intelligence is perverted further when some in the intelligence bureaucracy believe their role is to provide a check on the actions of elected leaders and see their job as figuratively "poking a finger in the policymaker's eye," he said.

"It will not be easy to fix this corruption of intelligence but it can begin by restricting the IC to the gathering and interpretation of FOREIGN secrets," deGraffenreid said.