Network of current, former intel officials boosts leftist agendas, says ex-CIA agent

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Current and former American intelligence officials jettisoned objectivity as part of leftist political policies implemented under then-President Obama, waging political warfare against then-candidate Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, according to a book by a former CIA agent detailing what he says was a clear politicization of the intelligence agency’s mission.

John Gentry, a veteran of both executive branch and congressional intelligence agencies and now an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, also warns that the politicization of the intelligence community, particularly the CIA, created a problem that still threatens American security.

Created to be a strictly neutral service for both Republican and Democratic administrations, the politicization within the CIA first became an issue during the 1990s when CIA analyst Robert Gates ordered analysts to skew reports in favor of political narratives of elected officials, Mr. Gentry states in his book, “Neutering the CIA: Why U.S. Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences.”

But what happened since 2016 has been far more serious and damaging to the agency’s role and mission, writes Mr. Gentry, a 12-year employee of the agency, including two years as a senior analyst on the staff of the National Intelligence Officer for Warning, who now teaches Missouri State University’s School of Defense and Strategic Studies. The author is also a retired Army Reserve officer who spent time with special operations and intelligence units.

“A new, dramatically stronger and damaging form of politicization — partisan, political activism willing to damage or destroy politically a sitting American president — had taken root in parts of the U.S. intelligence community,” Mr. Gentry writes. “It dwarfs the politicization episodes of the past in magnitude and importance, and it promises to have lasting, negative consequences.”

Mr. Gentry said his expose is not meant as a defense of Mr. Trump, who criticized intelligence agencies as a candidate and as president. The point of the book is to highlight how ideological opposition to Mr. Trump damaged the spy agencies themselves.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the book and referred to remarks last summer by Director William J. Burns.

Asked about politicization at his agency, Mr. Burns said his obligation “is to offer the best intelligence that we can collect and analyze straight up, even when that’s inconvenient to policymakers.”

Activism and social engineering

But Mr. Gentry traces the current politicization abuses to the Obama administration, which he contends first introduced ideological activism and social engineering to the once politically neutral intelligence agencies.

“The activism is concentrated in the CIA, the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] and the FBI,” he said in an interview, adding that the CIA’s analysis directorate remains “a center of partisan political activity.”

Mr. Obama, who served from 2009 to 2017, and his appointees “made and institutionalized significant changes, largely by creating new structures, policies, and incentives designed to alter organizational cultures in ways congruent with Obama’s political agenda,” Mr. Gentry said.

For instance, he said, the Obama administration hired Democratic activists who “shifted leftward the collective, politically salient worldview of the intelligence bureaucracy.”

Quoting current intelligence officials with knowledge of internal activities, Mr. Gentry believes the number of radical activists within the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, is small. But their influence is significant and driven by the offices set up under Mr. Obama to promote and enforce so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.

The first sign the nonpartisan nature of the intelligence community was being upended came in 2016, when former CIA analyst Michael J. Morell wrote an op-ed in The New York Times endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and sharply criticized Mr. Trump, her Republican opponent. That set in motion a movement of former intelligence officials who were recruited by intelligence activists inside the government to promote policies they supported and oppose mainly Republican leaders and policies.

The work of the unofficial group of former senior officials culminated in the 2020 letter signed by 51 former high-ranking intelligence officials asserting salacious and damaging information contained on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the son of now-President Biden, was likely a Russian disinformation ploy — even though U.S. intelligence agencies had determined at the time the laptop was genuine, Mr. Gentry stated.

U.S. officials have since concluded that Russian disinformation agencies had no role in the laptop or its contents.

Mr. Gentry says politicization at the FBI became evident with the bureau’s embrace in the midst of the 2016 campaign of the Christopher Steele dossier, which was later determined to contain false damaging information regarding Mr. Trump. The dossier was championed by the very top FBI leaders, including former FBI Director James B. Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and fired FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok, Mr. Gentry said.

The politicization problem did not end with the Trump administration although the political activism — including leaks of sensitive information against Trump and his aides — subsided after President Biden entered office in 2021.

“While activists tried hard to keep observers’ focus on Trump and his exceptionalism, the preponderance of evidence points strongly to the continued existence of a politicized [intelligence community] that will cause problems for years to come — long after Trump has left the political scene,” Mr. Gentry stated.

Mr. Gentry cites in the book a source in government who told him that serving CIA officers since 2016 have used classified and unclassified government communications systems to “share anti-Trump messages among themselves and outsiders.” The messages prompted no disciplinary action despite current technology that closely monitors such communications for unethical behavior, he said.

Fixing the problem

To restore integrity for intelligence, Mr. Gentry calls in his book for eliminating the offices of diversity within the various intelligence agencies.

“Restoring the objectivity of intelligence means revising the [intelligence community’s] ’diversity and inclusion’ policies and substantially reforming or eliminating the offices that implement them. These offices are centers of ideology-driven political activism,” he said.

Asked if an intelligence “Deep State” of powerful behind-the-scenes activists exists, as some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have suggested, Mr. Gentry says the closest thing to such entities are the diversity offices. All intelligence agencies now have such offices, which critics say impose politically charged “woke” personnel policies and enforce them by punishing those that do not comply.

The leftward political orientation of American universities, the prime recruiting ground for incoming intelligence analysts, also has contributed to the politicization phenomenon, Mr. Gentry argues. Younger intelligence officers entering the workforce did not share the past respect for traditional norms of secrecy and believed they were entitled to voice partisan political views.

“Not least, many were indoctrinated by teachers with increasingly left-wing politics who, like them, desired to spread the word,” Mr. Gentry said.

Mr. Gentry’s book targets several top former intelligence officials for the decline in political impartiality in the intelligence community, including former DNI James Clapper and John Brennan, who headed the CIA in Mr. Obama’s second term.

Both men pushed policies on intelligence agencies that were in line with Mr. Obama’s leftist political agenda, including those related to racial equity and sexual diversity in the workforce.

“Brennan, like Clapper at ODNI, told CIA personnel to participate overtly in political activities, internally or externally, in ways that were ideologically motivated and were designed to thwart the freedom of action of his duly appointed successors,” Mr. Gentry wrote. “Like Clapper, he came close to explicitly calling for insubordination against Trump. It was a radically different approach than any other [CIA director] before him had taken and was inappropriate.”

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, CIA director from 2006 and 2009, also helped to politicize U.S. intelligence, according to Mr. Gentry’s account, along with Edward “Ned” Price, a career CIA officer who resigned in protest during the Trump administration, citing candidate Trump’s criticisms of the intelligence agencies and his apparent siding with Russia in a dispute over whether the Kremlin had interfered with the 2016 election.

“Despite claiming to be an apolitical civil servant, Price had a long history of working for Democratic politicians and causes,” Mr. Gentry said.

Mr. Price is currently a senior State Department official. He did not immediately respond to an email request for comment

Another former official, former FBI agent Josh Campbell, who was a former aide to Mr. Comey, resigned from the FBI in 2018 after writing an anti-Trump op-ed for The New York Times.

In a later book, Mr. Campbell stated that Mr. Trump was a threat to the FBI and thus a threat to U.S. security, Mr. Gentry said.

The CIA years ago created the position of politicization ombudsman. However, the work and reports from the ombudsman are not publicized.