Gabbard fires top National Intelligence Council officials

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: msn/The Hill

12h


Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired two top officials at the National Intelligence Council, purging leaders amid what the office called an effort to address “weaponization” of intelligence. Gabbard removed the acting head of the council, Mike Collins, as well as his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof.

It’s a big shift at an entity the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) bills as part of the “analytic arm” of the intelligence community, with tasks including coordinating with policymakers. In addition to the removal of the two aides, Gabbard also uprooted the council from its office space at the CIA, returning it to quarters within the ODNI. “The director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community,” an ODNI spokesperson told The Hill. Fox News first reported the moves.

According to Fox, Collins was associated with Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, who was among the former intelligence officials who signed a letter casting doubt on the discovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop, saying it had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The firings come just days after the council released, through a Freedom of Information Act request, an assessment contradicting Trump administration claims that the Tren de Aragua gang is coordinating with the Venezuelan government. In doing so, it undercut a key basis for President Trump’s invocation of wartime powers to remove people to a Salvadoran prison.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gabbard-fires-top-national-intelligence-council-officials/ar-AA1EIvQJ

[4TheArts]

1. To tell the truth

That's what gets you fired in this regime - telling the truth.
Only those loyal to the regime are allowed to say what is truth.

[Botany]

2. Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian Agent/Asset who is corrupt.

So she has to fire people who told the truth such as the a Hunter Biden’s laptop
smear job was a Russian misinformation project and that Krasnov was lying
about Tren de Arugua and its links to the Venezuelan Government as an excuse
to hurt Venezuelans in his war on brown people.

[harun]

4. Ties too close to Modi in India as well

Shouldn't be anywhere near US Intelligence, must less running it.

[Botany]

5. And our A.G. Bondi has now said the DoJ will no longer investigate foreign (Russian) into our elections too.

Burning America to the ground.

[thesquanderer]

3. Here's the link to the original story

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5298799-gabbard-fires-national-intelligence-council-leaders/

(The problem with MSN and Yahoo links to articles that repost from other sites is that they expire. If you want to bookmark them for later reference, at some point, they stop working. My guess is that they are licensed to re-post those things only for a specified time.)

[BumRushDaShow]

6. I often use the aggregators

when there are multiple stories from the same source at around the same time so I can "mix it up" a bit and not have a pile of stories all from the same source in a row. In other cases, the aggregators will have slightly different versions of the story that are more "static" and not updating every 5 minutes (which happens with sources like AP, Reuters, and CNBC).

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Maddow Blog-Gabbard fires the wrong intelligence officials, at the wrong time, for the wrong reason

The National Intelligence Council produced a report that contradicted Donald Trump’s assumptions. Tulsi Gabbard just fired the council’s leadership.
https://bsky.app/profile/stevebenen.com/post/3lp5qt6th4s25

Last week: The National Intelligence Council produced facts Trump didn't want to hear.

This week: Tulsi Gabbard fired the National Intelligence Council's leaders.

The broader message to the IC isn't subtle, but it is dangerous.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gabbard-fires-wrong-intelligence-officials-wrong-time-wrong-reason-rcna206867

As NBC News reported last week, a declassified memo drafted by the National Intelligence Council — the top entity for analyzing classified intelligence and providing secret assessments to policymakers — explained that Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuelan regime is not orchestrating Tren de Aragua’s operations in the United States. (The document came to light by way of a Freedom of Information Act request by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization.)

A week later, as The Washington Post reported, Trump’s highly controversial and wildly unqualified national intelligence director decided to fire the leaders of the National Intelligence Council — the office that dared to tell the White House what it didn’t want to hear.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired the top two officials at the National Intelligence Council, weeks after the council wrote an assessment that contradicted President Donald Trump’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process. Gabbard removed Michael Collins, the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, as well as his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, according to a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office.

The official line from Gabbard is that she’s combatting the “politicization” of the intelligence community, a conspiratorial line embraced by partisans who disapprove of the extent to which intelligence agencies have presented evidence the president doesn’t like.

Indeed, as the Post noted, Gabbard has actually “removed or sidelined officials perceived to not support Trump’s political agenda.”

Or put another way, if anyone is “politicizing” U.S. intelligence, it’s Gabbard and her Team Trump colleagues. What’s more, the DNI’s latest purge sends a dangerous signal to intelligence officials throughout the government: Produce reports that make the president happy, regardless of the facts, or you might be next.

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Post, “Absent evidence to justify the firings, the workforce can only conclude that their jobs are contingent on producing analysis that is aligned with the president’s agenda, rather than truthful and apolitical.”

The developments come against a backdrop of Trump ignoring intelligence briefings and reports, as he moves forward with a “major downsizing” at U.S. intelligence agencies. In case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not forget that the president recently fired the leadership of the National Security Agency, a key intelligence gathering department, as well as the National Security Council’s director for intelligence.

In Trump’s first term, he and his team were merely hostile toward the U.S. intelligence community. In his second term, the broader offensive against the U.S. intelligence community is far more aggressive and damaging.