Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired two top intelligence officials who oversaw a recent intelligence assessment which contradicted President Donald Trump’s assertions that the gang Tren de Aragua is operating under the direction of the Venezuelan regime, two officials said Wednesday.
The assessment undermined the rationale for Trump invoking a rarely used 1798 law, the Alien Enemies Act, to allow suspected Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members in the U.S. to be summarily deported without standard due process.
Gabbard dismissed Michael Collins, the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, and council vice chair Maria Langan-Riekhof, both career officials with decades of experience in intelligence analysis, two officials said.
“She dismissed these individuals because they were unable to provide unbiased intelligence,” one of the officials said, without elaborating.
Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, said in a social media post that they were dismissed “because they politicized intelligence.”
A spokesperson for Gabbard, Olivia Coleman, said in an email: “The Director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the Intelligence Community.”
Last month, the National Intelligence Council, which oversees analyses based on information from the country’s intelligence agencies, produced a memo on the relationship between TdA and the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Citing a consensus from all other intelligence agencies except the FBI, it concluded that the gang does not take orders from or operate in close coordination with the Maduro government.
Trump and other administration officials have asserted that the regime directs TdAand cited that as a basis for invoking the Alien Enemies Act, declaring the gang an invading force. The law previously had only been used in wartime.
The assessment’s conclusion first became public in a Washington Post report.
It’s not known if Collins and Langan-Riekhof personally worked on the assessment, but the leaders of the council usually sign off on significant analyses, a former intelligence official said.
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who has lobbied Trump to fire some top national security officials, singled out Collins and the National Intelligence Council in a social media post last month.
“Why would leakers in the NIC try to undermine President Trump’s efforts to deport Tren De Aragua gang members? . . . The NIC senior officials should be fired.”
Loomer took credit for the recent dismissal of the four-star general overseeing the National Security Agency, Gen. Timothy Haugh.
Democratic lawmakers condemned the firings, as did former senior intelligence officials, one of whom accused Gabbard of punishing seasoned analysts for providing an assessment that did not back up the president’s agenda.
John Brennan, former director of the CIA, said the dismissals are “going to have real reverberations” for employees in the intelligence community.
“It’s clearly a signal to tell analysts throughout the intelligence community: ‘you tell the truth, you provide objective analysis, as you’re supposed to be doing, you are running the risk of getting fired,’” Brennan told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace.
He added that Collins and Langan-Riekhof “are two of the most experienced, accomplished, and talented analysts in the entire U.S. intelligence community” who have worked for successive presidents from both parties since the 1990s.
The episode suggests that intelligence professionals “have to get in line, that there’s a sense that there needs to be fealty to Donald Trump,” he said.
Jonathan Panikoff, who worked as an analyst at the National Intelligence Council, said in a social media post that the organization “is the heartbeat of apolitical US all-source analysis,” drawing on the best intelligence analysts.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an email that Gabbard “is purging intelligence officials over a report that the Trump administration finds politically inconvenient.”
Warner added: “Whatever the administration is trying to protect, it’s not our national security.”
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has written a letter to Gabbard demanding she provide information to Congress within a week explaining the firing of the two senior officials.
Citing media reports that the officials were sacked due to purported political bias, Himes wrote that it was “an exceptionally serious allegation to make against career intelligence officers” that should be supported by evidence. “I ask that you provide such evidence to the Committee no later than May 21,” he wrote.
Himes added that the decision to dismiss the officials from such an important body in the intelligence community should have been communicated to congressional intelligence committees in accordance with statutory requirements.
