One year after the State Department’s purge, a former INR analyst explains why he resigned and how the loss of expertise is making America less prepared for the crises ahead.
By David Abramson The Department of State, Washington, D.C.On July 11, 2025, the State Department dismissed some of its most experienced intelligence analysts merely to appease the Trump Administration’s demands for cuts. I left soon afterward—not because I had stopped believing in the mission, but because I believed the institution had stopped defending the analytical independence that made it indispensable. July 11, 2026 marked the first anniversary of the State Department’s execution of the Trump Administration’s directive to capriciously eliminate 15% of domestic department positions. I resigned from a career I loved because of it. I began my career in the State Department, coincidentally, just two months after 9/11. The tragic events of 2001 spurred a series of reforms in the intelligence community (IC), including the establishment of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI), to decrease the risks of such attacks by guiding the large and often siloed agencies toward closer collaboration and reducing groupthink among them. When I first came to The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) in 2005, I brought to bear years of graduate-level area studies training and research in the Soviet Union and its successor states following the USSR’s breakup in 1991. I had learned the Russian and Uzbek languages and spent extensive periods of time in Russia and Central Asia. This is a typical profile of an INR analyst. INR has a strong record of deep subject-matter expertise, high standards of analytical precision, and principled adherence to maintaining those standards. Unlike many of the other intelligence agencies that specialize in specific technical capabilities, INR’s ability to provide policy-relevant analysis, celebrated in the foreign policy community, is only possible because its analysts have the long-term knowledge to provide historical context and identify patterns in leadership behavior that help discern capabilities from intentions. I was proud to serve for many years in INR, the oldest and highly revered element of the intelligence community agencies. The RIF The Trump Administration had already begun firing tens of thousands of employees across the federal government, and July 11, 2025, was the deadline State leadership had set for the Department’s “reduction in force” (RIF). The Department made no clear effort to seek exceptions for INR, the Secretary of State’s own intelligence agency. Instead, INR’s leadership planned only to comply. At the time of the RIF, I was working as a senior Russian foreign policy analyst in INR. In outlining its plan months ahead of the RIFs, the bureau’s leadership led its personnel to expect that the firings very likely would not include senior intelligence analysts who had many years of experience. It therefore came as a shock when on July 11 the State Department fired six of my colleagues, five of whom were senior analysts with an average of 15 years of experience. Why I Left Shortly thereafter, I too decided to leave INR, a coveted job that gave me the enviable opportunity to work with so many talented colleagues and contribute to protecting Americans and supporting the promotion of our interests and values abroad. I left because the Trump Administration had sidelined the State Department as the lead foreign policy arm of the U.S. government, at least with regard to Russia and Ukraine. I left because the State Department’s leadership clearly had lost its way, neglecting its commitment to supporting national security in the process. And I left because, while no large institution is perfect, the pressure the Administration had enabled DOGE to unleash on federal agencies and workers had exacerbated existing fissures and tensions within the State Department that had been managed competently under normal times. INR’s Strength Decimated Three of my civil service colleagues, whose firings came as a surprise, all worked on different aspects of Russia’s foreign policy at a time when President Vladimir Putin was undermining American democracy and waging war on Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since World War II. The three included INR’s sole analyst who covered U.S. relations with Russia, when ties between the two leading nuclear powers are fraught and uncertain. Also fired was an analyst who had nearly 20 years of experience dedicated to relations between Russia and the Middle East, including Iran, with which the U.S. is now embroiled in a war that is threatening the entire region’s security and the global economy. The third had just been assigned to be the sole analyst responsible for the foreign and domestic politics of Ukraine after many years as an analyst covering other areas of the former Soviet Union. There are no portfolio redundancies among INR’s analysts, unlike at CIA or DIA. The bureau is too small an organization, which demands that every analyst be ready to provide insightful answers to questions on a moment’s notice from the Secretary of State and the Department’s senior leaders. This means that in times of crisis, INR does not “surge” personnel from elsewhere to provide coverage. INR civil service analysts spend years, often decades, working on specific countries and issues and understanding the leaders and people who make policies in the countries and organizations that we cover. While INR constitutes one of a number of intelligence agencies, its analysts’ value is that their long-term experience and knowledge allows them to see connections among events and people that others might overlook. This is particularly critical when the U.S. government needs to respond to fast-moving events, such as military conflicts, political and economic instability, and natural disasters. For example, INR played a key role in 2021 in broader intelligence community warnings that Putin was about to launch a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Many of Washington’s allies and partners, with whom the U.S. shared its intelligence and conclusions, were skeptical of U.S. assertions that Russia would attack, likely believing that this was flawed analysis or an influence campaign. However, as events unfolded, the U.S. intelligence community gained a broader respect that it had not enjoyed in decades. Allied and partner government requests for the U.S. to share intelligence reporting and analysis mushroomed. Unfortunately, this level of cooperation ended in January 2025. The RIFs severely compromised INR’s ability to prepare and deliver timely, high-quality, and tailored analysis because those who were left had to do more with less, and the loss of some of its most experienced analysts significantly reduced the level of expertise. Cleavages in the Aftermath Many large institutions have built-in cleavages and the potential for conflict between different factions and sub-interest groups. The State Department is no exception. Sadly, the Trump Administration’s pressure on State, especially during the DOGE period, triggered, among other things, a particularly counterproductive and detrimental tribalistic reaction that too many of the Department’s long-term and high-ranking leaders lacked the creativity and principles to transcend. Some hid their heads in the sand, and others circled the wagons around “their people,” but the effect damaged the institution rather than preserved it. Autocracy Leads to Institutional Rot I have studied and worked closely on authoritarian regimes long enough to appreciate that political pressure coming from top levels of government, whether driven by ideology, repression, greed, incompetence, or all of the above, rots institutions from within by fostering fear and factionalism and rewarding anticipatory obedience and self-interest. I have seen all of these corrosive behaviors play out in other countries from my perch in INR. Now I have experienced it firsthand in the State Department. There is one more reason I left INR: a concern that State Department or INR leadership, in an effort to appease the Administration, might seek to alter INR’s analytical conclusions to be more supportive of policy priorities. At the time, it was unclear to me whether we might see efforts to pressure analysts to modify language and conclusions, such as the DNI had done regarding Venezuela. But I had lost all confidence that the Department and INR leadership would take measures to protect analytical integrity. State Department leadership, officials across the U.S. government, and foreign policy experts worldwide historically have respected INR for its nuanced and accurate analysis, even when its conclusions are at odds with their own views and those of other intelligence agencies. Quashing analytical disagreements weakens the government’s ability to understand what our adversaries and allies are thinking, how they might respond to U.S. actions, and what threats the U.S. should anticipate. Without such analytical autonomy and integrity, the likelihood increases that an administration gets caught by surprise in a way that harms American interests, American lives, and long-term national and global security. It can also lead to very real dangers when a U.S. administration takes actions based on unnecessarily misguided and falsified intelligence analysis. A Shameful Period No doubt, this will be remembered as a shameful period in the State Department’s history in which its leadership abandoned its responsibility to defend institutional principles and ideals at all costs. That said, the vast majority of my colleagues, whether those who were fired, those who chose to leave, or those who stayed, have exhibited, throughout this ordeal, remarkable professionalism, dignity, and respect for one another and their work in service of the United States. This makes me hopeful that INR, and indeed the State Department, will make needed repairs when given the opportunity and emerge in the end as the institution it needs to be. I also hope that the damage that has been done to date will create a much-needed road map for bolstering the Department’s resilience in the face of future challenges, but this is far from certain. To accomplish this, in the future, it will need to take a hard and critical look at how its “leaders” behaved in these times. David Abramson is an expert on Russia and Central Asia and worked for 20 years as an analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where he covered Russian foreign policy (2017-2025) and Central Asia (2005-2017). Dr. Abramson, who received his Ph.D in cultural anthropology from Indiana University, most recently published Putin’s war has undermined Russia’s advantages, regardless of the US with New Eurasian Strategies Centre. He is a member of The Steady State. |