Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard’s office unveiled new details Monday about how an unaccountable Deep State came to be embedded in the intelligence community (IC) and how she will uproot it.
A new task force in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) first announced in April has unearthed new information about the corruption of the IC, it announced. Former longtime DNI James Clapper and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan centralized their own power by elevating politically aligned operatives to influential posts at the National Intelligence Council and the President’s Daily Briefing, according to an ODNI official.
Brennan also reorganized the CIA to prioritize analysis and push operations to the backburner, empowering a few higher-ups with influence over all of its intelligence products, according to ODNI.
The new details pull back the curtain on the murky world of the IC, which after several scandals — the manufactured “Russiagate” intelligence, the bid to cast Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation, the suppression of intelligence pointing to a Wuhan lab accident — faces a crisis of confidence among Americans who wonder whether officials prioritize politics over professionalism.
Heading up the effort to reform the IC is the Director’s Intelligence Group (DIG), a task force that the ODNI announced in April to stop the weaponization of intelligence and declassify certain intelligence in the public interest. The DIG is made up of experts and analysts from the ODNI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, the Pentagon and the FBI.
Ongoing and future efforts include obtaining prior IC assessments of election infrastructure in 2022 and 2020; interviewing whistleblowers with information to share about the actions of Clapper to politicize intel; investigating allegations the Biden administration abused the label of “domestic terrorist” to persecute political enemies; investigating links between the IC and Big Tech and efforts to censor Americans; and investigating whether tax dollars funneled through the IC may have funded dangerous gain-of-function virology that enhances viruses.
For her efforts to reform the IC, Gabbard has encountered pushback and a smear campaign, the ODNI charges.
Brennan did not immediately return a request for comment. Clapper could not be reached for comment.
WATCH: @DNIGabbard declassified two reports that reveal new details on how the Biden administration weaponized intelligence against Americans — labeling those who held dissenting political opinions on COVID, immigration, and the 2020 election “domestic violent extremists.”
Read… pic.twitter.com/sI67iG2Rts
— Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) May 29, 2025
The announcement follows a July 3 CIA report unveiling new details about the creation of an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that cited the fictional Steele dossier as evidence of a Russian conspiracy to elect President Donald Trump.
Accusations of collusion between Trump and Russia — falsely legitimized by the December 2016 ICA and its leak to the press — consumed enormous political capital and dominated media headlines during the president’s first term.
“Agency heads at the time created a politically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process around an issue essential to our democracy,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement.
The report did laud the ICA’s overall “analytic rigor,” prompting complaints from Capitol Hill that it was not strident enough in its critique of the IC. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford is seeking declassification of the committee’s own report detailing the ICA process. The CIA forbade the report from being transported to Capitol Hill until recent weeks.
According to the ODNI, that ICA was made possible because Clapper and Brennan had created a culture of politicized intelligence and centralized decision-making.
The authorities of the ODNI, established after 9/11 to facilitate interagency intelligence sharing and reduce stove-piping after the intelligence failure that preceded 9/11, includes establishing standards and guidance for the IC.
ODNI has never before used its oversight authority to ensure IC elements are maintaining analytic integrity and complying with the law, the ODNI said.
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