The Politicization Of Intelligenceand

“Never, ever…was there ever a hint that an analyst would be fired because they produced conclusions that did not fit with the administration’s policy preferences. Until Now.”

I served on the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in the mid-1990’s as the Deputy to the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia under Ezra Vogel, the brilliant and universally respected Asia scholar. Our pairing was typical of the composition of the NIC — a mixture of outside experts and seasoned intelligence officers joined in a single common purpose: to provide the best finished intelligence possible to the policymakers, including the President.

Sometimes that intelligence did not sit well with those policymakers and they would ask for a second look. That is completely legitimate. Never, ever, however, was there ever a hint that an analyst would be fired because they produced conclusions that did not fit with the administration’s policy preferences.

Policymakers could ignore the intelligence or criticize it, and they sometimes did.

Until Now.

It was not normal to question the integrity or intentions of the people who produced this intelligence. It might be difficult for the completely miscast Tulsi Gabbard to understand that the ranks of the intelligence community – and indeed the government at large – are filled by professionals who are dedicated to their mission, and not to political or personal gain. As a partisan politician, her denunciations of imaginary “politicization” and “weaponization” of the intelligence community would be ironic if they were not so hypocritical.

The danger from the corruption of the process that she and her associates are inflicting is not that the NIC or other intelligence organizations will start producing intelligence to fit political ends – its members have too much integrity – but that the experts that are needed to produce top quality analysis will start to avoid involvement in the process. In today’s fraught world, full of ion and misinformation, objective, unbiased intelligence is needed more than ever. The appointed “leadership” of the intelligence community fails the nation when it acts to warp intelligence to its own predetermined views.

Michael Eiland, Former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, is a member of

The Steady State

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 270 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.