CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Wednesday that a restructuring was underway at President Donald Trump’s direction to eliminate “well-documented politicization” of the agency.
Trump joked during a meeting of his Cabinet secretaries on Wednesday that perhaps Ratcliffe was the only one “who’s not allowed to talk about the great job he’s done,” given the classified nature of the Central Intelligence Agency’s work.
“At your direction, the CIA has deployed our unique covert action, authorities in various places and continents, to successfully advance your national security and foreign policy priorities, to advance peace, to end wars, to take terrorists off the battlefield, and to keep illicit drugs from coming into this country and harming Americans,” Ratcliffe reported to Trump, in front of news cameras. “Unfortunately, as much as I would love to detail your accomplishments in that regard, we can’t do so with this crowd. But you and I both know, Mr. President, that you have had a profound positive impact on America’s national security posture. And Americans are safer because of your leadership.”
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“Mr. President, the CIA is being restructured at your direction to focus on our core mission and to eliminate the political – the well-documented politicization that has taken place in the intelligence community from bad actors in the past to focus on our core mission and to Make America Safe Again,” Ratcliffe added, thanking Trump for the opportunity without elaborating further.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also referenced efforts to combat “politicization” within the intelligence community at the Cabinet meeting.
“I’m grateful to have the privilege of leading the intelligence community towards ending the weaponization. Politicization of the intelligence community has gone on for far too long,” Gabbard said. “And building out what is truly a lean and agile and effective intelligence community that is helping you deliver that promise to the American people of safety, security, and freedom.”
“We’re working every day to hold the deep state accountable to end the politicization of weaponization of the intelligence community,” Gabbard continued. “This past week, I sent three criminal referrals for illegal and unauthorized leaks to the media of classified intelligence for prosecution. We have 11 more that are under investigation. We’ve revoked, at your direction, 67 security clearances, and we continue the work of declassifying documents.”
The U.S. government has already declassified documents surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and Gabbard said she was working to declassify more documents around the assassination of former U.S. Attorney General and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy – the father of Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.
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“And we continue our extensive investigations around exposing the very serious issues we have related to election integrity, illegal abuses of FISA, Crossfire Hurricane, and others,” Gabbard said. “Mr. President, under your leadership, we are working every day to bring about that transparency and accountability that the American people deserve.”
Last month, Trump signed an executive order instructing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the agency probe launched in 2016 that sought information on whether Trump campaign members colluded with Russia during the presidential race.
At the Cabinet meeting, another U.S. intelligence leader, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, separately acknowledged that multiple federal agencies came together under the president’s leadership to capture terrorists, including the “evil individual responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing” during the Biden administration’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Thirteen U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians were killed when an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated at Kabul’s airport.
One of those agencies was the CIA. Ratcliffe told the gathering of Cabinet secretaries that the CIA “provided the intelligence that led to the apprehension of the Abbey Gate bomber, who is now being prosecuted by our great attorney general and providing a measure of justice to those 13 families that suffered as a result of that disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, during the last administration.”
Trump reiterated at the Cabinet meeting that what happened at Abbey Gate was a “disgrace” under the Biden administration and that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is working on prosecuting the alleged planner of the attack. The Justice Department announced last month that ISIS-K member Mohammad Sharifullah, also known as “Jafar,” has been arrested on federal terrorism charges in connection to the attack and was extradited to the U.S. He made a brief appearance in Virginia federal court.
Ratcliffe also told the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the CIA, at Trump’s direction, has negotiated and secured the release of Americans like Mark Fogel and Ksenia Karelina, “who had been wrongfully detained, sending the message that you will forget about no Americans that are being held in other places unfairly and unjustly.”
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