Textbook Bias: Deep State’s Election Interference Spin Is Now A Case Study In Spy Schools

As evidence piles up of American spies spinning intel about foreign election interference because of their feelings about President Donald Trump, spy schools around the world now use the scandal as a textbook case of politicized intelligence.

Tradecraft classes in Italy, Canada, Israel and other nations study the way that senior officials manipulated intelligence about Russian and Chinese election meddling according to their stance on Trump, Barry Zulauf, formerly an internal watchdog for the intelligence community (IC), told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

As the IC’s independent ombudsman, Zulauf authored a 2021 report concluding that the IC massaged intelligence about Russian and Chinese election interference. Zulauf’s inquiry has become standard reference material for young spies in training, he told the DCNF.

In the U.S., the U.S. intelligence community added new instruction on politicization to Analysis 101, the orientation for the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and a seminar on objectivity for the whole IC, per Zulauf.

Trump revealed in a primetime speech in July that American spy agencies suppressed evidence that China hacked into massive reams of voter data from his Presidential Daily Brief. The revelation may deepen the suspicions of many Americans that spy agencies constitute a Deep State unaccountable to outsiders, even the president — referred to in the intelligence community as “Customer #1.”

The media has largely dismissed these concerns as conspiratorial. Yet spy schools throughout the globe have adapted their curriculums to respond to this very issue.

Zulauf’s report notes that “analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the Administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.”

Two intelligence officials in October 2020 raised concerns about Chinese election influence activities that other career analysts dismissed, the Zulauf report states. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) management pressured the intelligence officials to suppress these concerns, the Zulauf report also states.

Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, now the CIA director, agreed that China had sought to interfere in the election. Ratcliffe said that “similar actions by Russia and China are assessed and communicated to policymakers differently, potentially leading to the false impression that Russia sought to influence the election but China did not” in a memo dated the day after Zulauf’s report.