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The director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard dismissed two senior intelligence officials who supervised a recent intelligence assessment which contradicts President Donald Trump’s claims according to which the Gang Tren of Aragua operated under the direction of the Venezuelan regime, two officials announced on Wednesday.
The evaluation has undermined the justification of Trump invoking a law rarely used in 1798, the law on extraterrestrial enemies, to allow suspicious members of the gangs of Tren of Aragua (ADD) in the United States to be summarily expelled without regular procedure.
Gabbard rejected Michael Collins, acting president of the National Intelligence Council, and the vice-president of the Council Maria Langan-Riekhof, both career managers with decades of experience in intelligence analysis, said two officials.
“She rejected these people because they could not provide impartial information,” said one of the officials, without developing.
Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, said in an article on social networks that they were rejected “because they politicize information”.
A spokesperson for Gabbard, Olivia Coleman, said in an email: “The director works alongside President Trump to end the armament and politicization of the intelligence community.”
Last month, the National Intelligence Council, which oversees analyzes according to information from the country’s intelligence agencies, produced a service note on the relationship between ADD and the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Citing a consensus of all other intelligence agencies, except for the FBI, he concluded that the gang does not take orders or does not work in close coordination with the government of Maduro.
Trump and other administration officials said that the regime directs TDAand has cited as a basis to invoke the Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies, declaring the gang an invasion force. The law previously had not been used in war time.
The conclusion of the evaluation has become public in a Washington Post report.
It is not known if Collins and Langan-Riekhof have personally worked on the evaluation, but the directors of the Council are generally preparing for important analyzes, said a former intelligence official.
Laura Loomer, an far -right activist who pressure Social media message last month.
“Why would the leaks in the NIC try to undermine President Trump’s efforts to expel the members of the gangs of Tren of Aragua? … The senior officials of the NIC should be dismissed.”
Loomer took the credit of the recent dismissal of General Four Stars supervising the National Security Agency, General Timothy Haugh.
Democratic legislators have condemned layoffs, as well as former senior intelligence officials, one of whom accused Gabbard of having punished the seasoned analysts for providing an assessment that did not support the president’s agenda.
John Brennan, former Director of the CIA, said that dismissals “would have real reverberations” for the employees of the intelligence community.
“This is clearly a signal to tell the analysts of the intelligence community:” You say the truth, you provide an objective analysis, as you are supposed to do, you run the risk of turning, “Brennan told Nicole Wallace from MSNBC.
He added that Collins and Langan-Riekhof “are two of the most experienced, accomplished and talented analysts in the entire American intelligence community” who have worked for successive presidents of both parties since the 1990s.
The episode suggests that intelligence professionals “must put themselves online, that there is a feeling that there must be loyalty to Donald Trump,” he said.
Jonathan Panikoff, who worked as an analyst in the National Intelligence Council, said in an article on social networks that the organization “is the heart rate of the apolitical analysis of the United States”, based on the best intelligence analysts.
Senator Mark Warner, the best democrat of the Senate intelligence committee, said in an email that Gabbard “purges intelligence officials on a report that the Trump administration finds politically embarrassing”.
Warner added: “Whatever the administration is trying to protect, it is not our national security.”
Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the classification democrat of the Chamber Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter In Gabbard demanding that it provides information at the congress in a week explaining the dismissal of the two senior officials.
Citing media reports that officials were dismissed due to alleged political prejudices, Himes wrote that it was “an exceptionally serious allegation to do against professional intelligence officers” which should be supported by evidence. “I ask you to provide such evidence to the committee no later than May 21,” he wrote.
Himes added that the decision to reject the officials of such an important organization in the intelligence community should have been communicated to the Congress’s intelligence committees in accordance with legal requirements.
