Former analyst decries CIA politicization of intelligence, new levels of activism under Biden

Politicization of intelligence at the CIA reached new levels of activism under President Biden, according to an academic analysis of recent political influence within the agency.

John A. Gentry, a former CIA analyst who has written extensively on the topic, stated in a recent journal article that the problem accelerated during the Trump administration when current and former intelligence officials worked to undermine Mr. Trump and his presidency through leaks and public statements.

Mr. Gentry compared current politicization at the CIA to three past periods: the debate over the Vietnam War, the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the George W. Bush administration in 2003 and 2004.

“In summary, the recent wave was much larger, lasted longer, and differed qualitatively in important ways from earlier episodes,” Mr. Gentry wrote in the current issue of the journal Comparative Strategy. “The overt activism of the Trump years receded soon after President Biden, … but the re-engineered CIA culture remains untouched. It simply is now quiet. Indeed, Biden’s actions seem to have strengthened it appreciably.”

Political activism by current and former CIA employees has shocked many American intelligence officers and people generally, he said.

Overt, intelligence-rationalized partisanship was quietly opposed by many professional intelligence officers but applauded by others who regarded it as a needed counter to Mr. Trump and his policies, Mr. Gentry said.

Former President Barack Obama was blamed by the former CIA analyst for setting in motion the current politicization through personnel diversity policies that Mr. Gentry said favored race and gender considerations over merit. The CIA under John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also faced criticism for allegedly promoting political activism among spies and analysts.

Past politicization included “cooking the books” for intelligence analysis to alter policies, and politicians who twisted intelligence to influence policy.

The current activism involves a stronger version of the first type, with intelligence critics invoking their credentials to rationalize partisan policy advocacy, that Mr. Gentry says violates the traditional approach of apolitical intelligence.

“The Obama/Clapper/Brennan strategy of politicizing the [intelligence community], as part of the broader, publicly stated program to change the federal workforce and the country, successfully altered both the demography and the organizational culture of CIA in politically significant ways,” Mr. Gentry wrote. “In sharp contrast, all previous senior [intelligence] leaders sought to keep the agencies apolitical, meaning they strenuously opposed the kind of politicization that Obama and his subordinates promoted.”

President Biden then “re-energized and expanded Obama-era personnel polices throughout the federal government by issuing a series of aggressive executive orders to push an expanded ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ agenda,” he said.

Mr. Gentry said the era when an apolitical CIA served all presidents impartially is over: “Whatever may occur in the future, it is now clear that the CIA is a radically different agency than the one that served the country generally well for many decades before 2011.”