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 fires leaders of intelligence group that wrote Venezuela assessment
The director of national intelligence fired top officials weeks after their group authored an assessment contradicting President Donald Trump’s legal rationale for deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members.
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 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,” said Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “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.
Among all U.S. intelligence units, the FBI was the sole agency to dissent in part from the study’s conclusions, assessing that some Venezuelan government officials facilitate Tren de Aragua’s members’ migration to the United States and use elements of the gangs as proxies to advance the Maduro regime’s goals.
It was unclear what, if any, direct role Collins or Langan-Riekhof had in drafting the assessment, which states that it was prepared by the National Intelligence Officer for the Western Hemisphere.
In late April, Gabbard said that she had asked the Justice Department to investigate alleged leaks from the intelligence community by people she described as “deep-state criminals.” Her deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, said on X that one of the leaks included information published in a Post article on Tren de Aragua.
Gabbard is also physically moving the National Intelligence Council, which is a part of ODNI, a U.S. official said. The NIC’s offices have been located at the CIA, but will be moved a few miles away to ODNI’s campus in McLean, Virginia, the official said.